The Faithful Departed
by Bridget Weinstock
Summary: Set after the sudden end of Series 6. Ballykissangel's dirty little secret comes to light: Brian Quigley's wasn't the only fake death. (Sometimes the only way to fix a ludicrous story arc is to throw another ludicrous premise at it.) Peter/Assumpta; Niamh/Ambrose (yes, really) and maybe other pairings as well.
1. Chapter 1

_Ballykea seemed to have an inexplicably high rate of premature death, and certain survivors seemed to get over their grief all too quickly. Only one explanation made sense, and it was the most ludicrous thing..._

_Here's the funny thing about faking your own death: When one person is guilty of it, it's unconscionable, cruel, social deviance. When **a whole town** is guilty, it becomes a quaint local custom. _

_But tradition doesn't always survive the handoff from one generation to another. Sometimes, when truth and tradition go to battle, truth wins.  
_

* * *

MANCHESTER

Three years had felt like the blink of an eye.

An unwilling blink, true - like when one's in a playground staring contest, and blinking is the ultimate defeat. Father Peter Clifford had not wanted time to pass following the loss of Assumpta Fitzgerald. He had not wanted the world to turn in her absence, nor the sun to rise. For so long he'd hidden away entirely, slept all he could, eaten little, gotten most of his calories from drink.

And yet he'd survived, moved home to the house his mother willed to him. He'd shaved, one day; finding the liquor cabinet bare, he'd decided not to restock it; and after some serious penance, he'd taken on again with the home parish in Manchester. He was once more Father Randall's curate, saying mass, christening babies - and today, hearing confessions.

The penitent opposite him now was on the confessional's kneeler, staying anonymous, and speaking in the barest audible whisper.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been...probably about two years since my last confession."

The voice was male, and Peter detected a hint of Irish lilt. It made his heart ache. "You are lapsed, then?"

"You're really Father Clifford, then," the man responded.

Peter frowned. "I am."

"Father, I did something terrible in 1999."

"Go on."

"My wife had fallen in love with someone else, so I abandoned her and our little boy."

Peter tried to override the pain the accent was causing him. _If I didn't know any better_... "Go on," he finally managed.

The penitent's own voice was breaking, the timbre of it leaking slow into the cracks of the whispers. "I didn't want my son to grow up in a divorced family, so I..."

"You just left," Peter volunteered,, reeling, hoping to rush this along.

"No, not just."

"What do you mean then?"

"I found an opportunity, Father, and I...I gave up everything. Do you understand, do you?"

"I'm trying."

"Father..." _That voice_. It was coming into its own now, going from whisper to speech. Like a pen, once thought to have run out of ink, but which only really needed a warmup scribble.

_Back to life. _

_Lazarus. _

_Jesus._

_Focus_. "It's okay, take your time."_ My child,_ he wanted to say, but the man was near his own age. He would almost swear...

"Father, in my hometown...It wasn't unheard of..."

"What wasn't unheard of?"

"I'd heard rumours about the local GP. That if you needed to disappear, he'd help you. One afternoon I came up to a cliff. Some stranded men down below were crying for help. I knew I'd be useless but I had to try, and then I thought only if I'm even meant to survive this... I didn't care anymore! Do you understand?"

_Too well_, Peter thought. "I do."

"When I fell I hit water. Deep water. Thought I'd drown but I buoyed right to the surface. I was scraped up and full of adrenaline, but I was unharmed. The sea immediately washed me onto the rocks below and I realised the men were screaming. I thought this is it. This is my chance. My wife can have the man she loves without a divorce, and the doc will help me go away. So when they came for me I didn't move. I felt cold from the water. No one asked why I wasn't bleeding from the trauma. It was as if it was simply understood. Michael took my pulse and he pretended to feel nothing."

Michael.

"You faked your own death?" Peter whispered, his heart slamming shut.

"I did." The penitent was at full volume now. "Father..."

"I'm not supposed to guess who you are unless you tell me," Peter said gently as he could. He wanted to rip down the barrier between them. He also wanted to fall over.

"But you know, don't you? Tell me you remember me, Father."

"Of course, Ambrose. Does anyone else really know? Back home?"

"That's the other bit I have to confess."

"It's okay, Ambrose. Go ahead."

"He said I wasn't the first. And I don't think I've been the last."

Peter felt his mouth going numb on the inside, felt cold sweat beading on his lip. "Ambrose," he pleaded.

"Brian Quigley's done it," Ambrose said. "There's a chance my own father did it years ago."

Peter's heart broke again. It had been too much to hope, and sure enough-

"And Assumpta, Father."

Peter heard himself sob.

"Doc Ryan told me. I've found out where she is. She did it for you, so you could keep your job."

Peter felt his skin get clammy, felt his fingers and toes go on pins and needles. Then everything went black.


	2. Chapter 2

_Still with me after that first whopper? Much obliged. Warning's fair: this one will have my fingerprints and agendas ALL OVER IT.  
_

* * *

BELFAST

Assumpta slid out of her black leather character heels only when the rest of the actresses had already done so. As they busied themselves taking off costumes and putting on street clothes, she surreptitiously opened the tiny stainless flask in her handbag. She put a splash of vodka in each shoe, to kill germs and odours, then one more in her mouth to kill the nagging in her mind.

She killed time, too - unpinning her hair as the others packed up, waiting as always for the last to leave. She never had found communal changing easy, never taken to strutting about topless whilst her makeup and hair set, the way some others did. Tonight, though, she was growing impatient. It was as if Caitlin, the ingenue, meant to dawdle as long as possible.

Caitlin paused between coats of lip gloss. "You'll join us at the cast party, Maire?" It was the name Assumpta had taught herself to answer to, had paired with her mother's maiden name. _Everyone uses a stage name_, she had assured herself on arriving in Belfast three years ago. _Even people who aren't supposed to be dead._ It was no less fitting than her real name. Blessed Virgin. Blessed Mother. Assumpta was hardly either.

Caitlin was staring, waiting for a response.

"Hadn't decided," Assumpta bluffed. "Where is it?"

"Same as last show. Pub down the road."

"Ah. No, no, I'd better turn in early tonight, I think."

"Suit yourself. Was that a knock?"

"I didn't hear anything."

The young, svelte blonde sighed and rose to her full willowy height, opening the door to a floral delivery girl. Assumpta gave her bare-bulb-framed reflection a wry grin. She had thought for certain all Caitlin's admirers had already made their feelings known by curtain time this final matinee, but sure there was always one more. Especially since she'd been in the TV advert for a local fast-food spot. _As if this girl had ever eaten a cheeseburger in her life..._

The courier retrieved a pen from her shirt pocket. "Delivery for Maire Mellon?"

Caitlin spun on her heel and gave Assumpta a surprised grin. Assumpta stepped forward on her bare feet and signed for the bouquet, perplexed, uneasy. She cradled it against her with one arm as she pulled the card free from its plastic brace.

**_Maire,_** it read,

**_Please ring when you get a chance. Urgent._**

**_Dr. Michael Ryan_**

"Got yourself a fan?" Caitlin purred, the way an adult congratulates a child for tying her own shoes.

Assumpta felt her heart pounding, and suddenly worried that the whole isle could somehow hear it, could know she still had a heartbeat. "Something like that," she muttered.

* * *

The stage had been, in an odd way, the perfect hiding place. She never looked like herself; wigs and period costumes and contouring Ben Nye makeup saw to that. Assumpta Fitzgerald had done theatre in college and, once, in Ballykea; life-enhancing works of art, pivotal leading roles. Maire Mellon's career, on the other hand, would have proven untraceable - if only anyone ever researched it, which they never did. They wanted to know about the ingenue, the male lead, the soap opera has-been making a "special guest appearance" in a three-line cameo - but they were never terribly curious about the chorus singer, or the dinner guest who was poisoned before Intermission, or the leading lady's shrewish older sister.

She told herself it had to be expected as a woman neared the end of her twenties, though she noticed the leading men were as often pushing forty as they were any younger. She told herself she couldn't expect those leading roles when the audition pool always averaged a head taller and a stone lighter, but in truth she sometimes missed Niamh and Siobhan telling her how slim she was, or missed getting roles on her talent's merits instead of her "type." She told herself steady work was a miracle in and of itself; she told herself that it was for the best that an adult runaway with an assumed name wasn't getting top billing. Still, these one-note walk-ons were beginning to wear thin. And this place was hardly The Lyric; its shallow parodies and door-slamming farces were far from high art. Forget _Playboy of the Western World._ This place couldn't secure the rights to _Dancing at Lughnasa_. Wouldn't even want to. Not full-time, not professional, not even aspiring to be.

She told herself that was show business.

She also told herself after all this time that she had done the right thing. That she wouldn't be missed. Fionn was surely still a happy pet to Kevin O'Kelly; Fitzgerald's was surely still the best pub in County Wicklow under Niamh's careful watch; Peter was surely still a good priest - parish priest by now, even.

All as it should be. The only way it could. Surely.

What on Earth did Michael want, then?!

She had one more nip from the flask.

She shrugged off the ridiculous, ill-fitting chambermaid costume and hung it on its hook. She pulled on her socks, then jeans, and finally her ages-old black t-shirt with its faded silkscreen of Raphael's cherubs. At last, she dipped her fingers into the cold cream and began to massage away the stranger's face she'd been wearing.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Might as well warn you now. I am "Team Ambrose." Always will be._

* * *

LONDON

Niamh passed by what had been Emma's room before she left for university. Strange, she thought, how everyone was abandoning Sean at once. Down to the young boy waiting downstairs in the car, down to the good-sized dog sleeping on that boy's lap. An exodus.

It had all been such a whirlwind, such fun in the beginning. They'd had a couple good years, once the dust settled from losing Ambrose. Emma welcomed her young stepmother more like a confidante, and Niamh had found good (if casual) friends in the church choir, and meaningful work as a teaching aide in London.

Still, she couldn't call it "home." Some things had simply never gelled. Sean suddenly wanted Kieran to call him "da'," and Kieran wouldn't. And a year out, Niamh had realised she didn't really want him to. Two years out, she'd found a host of other things she didn't want.

After Emma's departure, Sean seemed, really, to want to parent the whole family - including Niamh. The gap between their ages wasn't what she would've considered scandalous, but he came to wield it like a trump card, came to lord it over her. It wasn't abuse, just a constant stream of patronising, condescension, _let me explain the way things are_. The way they had to be.

She ultimately tabled their talk of another baby. She bristled at the thought of being told how to carry it, birth it, nurse it. _No._

When the word of her father's "suicide" reached her, she knew almost right away what had really happened. Still, it began to eat away at her: she had missed her last chance to see him, at least without leaving the hemisphere (and anyway Sean's travel preferences always took priority because she knew he'd sulk if he didn't get his way). She had missed her father's last days in the country of his birth, in the house where she grew up, in the town where her mother was buried. She didn't begrudge her father faking his death, couldn't imagine begrudging it of anyone who so clearly felt he had no choice.

But Sean's emotional welfare had become her own burden exclusively, and that she could begrudge indeed. She began to resent his goading her into leaving Ballykea. It hadn't troubled her in the moment, giving herself over, thinking of nothing but his happiness. Now, though, she wondered what it would be like to be the centre of her own universe, and her son's. In London, she had become a selfless satellite to a gas giant.

So she had found a good solicitor and served Sean with the papers - an act she wouldn't have dreamt of in her early twenties, yet so obviously her only option now. She remembered telling Father Clifford plainly that she didn't agree with divorce. What would he think of all this? If he couldn't sympathise, sure Assumpta could've.

The urge to confess to _him,_ to confide in _her_, even to cling to Ambrose, still caught Niamh off-guard from time to time. In idle wishes. In dreams. Sometimes she awoke to the slow-dawning memory that those days were gone.

She shut the hatch of the car over the Samsonites, and clambered into the driver's seat.

"Ready to get back to Ireland?" she asked, glancing in the rearview. Kieran had already nodded off.

Niamh turned on a radio station Sean had never liked, and allowed herself a few stupid tears. Shifting into drive, she heard her mobile go off. Shifting back into park, she fished it out, expecting yet another guilt trip. _I'm way ahead of you, Sean,_ she thought.

The prefix on the ID nearly stopped her heart.

Kieran awoke. "Who is it, Mummy?" he yawned.

"Our reputation precedes us," she whispered, hitting the TALK button.

* * *

BALLYKISSANGEL

Doc Ryan came down to the pub on his lunch. He'd intended to stay close to his desk - it seemed he'd been unable to get off the phone all morning - but something in him needed an hour of escape. He disliked asking favours, and gracious as Niamh had been, the call had worn him out. Too much he had to ask; too little he could explain.

Anyway, surely anyone else would be having their lunch now as well.

Father Mac waved him over to a table, and soon Oonagh Dooley brought two heaving pints before them. Then she departed in silence, seeming to sense that they'd chosen a shadowy corner for a reason.

The parish priest clutched his cane at chin level, rocking it with two overlapping hands. "I hear Gard Sullivan's letting you off with a scold?"

Michael tilted his head toward his shoulder - the marriage of a nod and a shrug. "Can't guarantee access to the same palliative herbal remedies, now," he said softly.

Frank gave a withering look. "The thought hadn't crossed my mind."

"Of course not, Father. Only I was thinking of your arthritis..."

"Join the club."

"Bishop's still riding you?"

"Father Sheahan gave a brave ultimatum, but..." Frank shook his head.

Michael nodded, knowing just how little good the Australian curate's threats would do. "Costello really was better."

"Softer touch."

"Bigger ears as well. Whatever became of him?"

"He retired." The parish priest finally lay his cane against the table and hoisted his glass - still possessed of far too much head, a shortcoming that had never happened when the Fitzgerald family ran the place. "Michael, is the bishop right? Has my time come?"

"I should say none of us ever knows. Wondered enough lately how much longer I can keep up."

"Legal troubles and all?"

_You don't know the half of it,_ thought Michael, thinking of Ambrose's guilt-ridden warning letter a week ago. "Every doctor walks a line. Legal, moral, ethical, scientific."

"Don't we all of us walk a line?" drawled Frank.

Michael tilted his head once more. "A few decades on it can get a bit dizzying."

"You've always done what you thought best."

The foam had settled. Michael sipped his stout.

They noticed now that Oonagh was back at their table. She looked apologetic, wringing her hands. "Sorry to interrupt. Doc, telephone for you."

"Here?" Michael asked.

She nodded. "Said she already tried your dispensary. One 'Maire Mellon'?"

_That was quick_.

Michael permitted himself one large swig, and rose to take the call.

"Patient confidentiality," he said to Oonagh. "May I take it in the lounge?"


	4. Chapter 4

_Thanks to everyone who is reading, reviewing, following, or favouriting. I suspect we're in for a long haul; plenty of angst, but I hope there are some laughs as well. I trust that you're all following the other works-in-progress that have been cropping up? They're amazing, all of them. _

* * *

MANCHESTER

Father Miles Randall put his loafers up on the edge of his cluttered walnut desk, and polished his eyeglasses with the hem of his untucked shirttail. "You know, Father Clifford, you still have a nickname floating round the parish."

Peter tried to look game, though he knew he was still pale and his eyes were still bloodshot. "Do I?"

Father Randall grinned as he put his spectacles back on, finally meeting the curate's eyes. "They call you 'the comeback kid.'" He steepled his hands over his ample belly; the pewter lawn on his head glinted in the incoming sunlight.

Peter managed a chuckle, but only just. "Not 'the prodigal son'?"

Father Randall smiled gamely. "Testament to your resiliency. Something of a legend at this point."

"All evidence to the contrary," Peter said.

Father Randall's smile turned serious. "Can we talk about what happened to you in the confessional?"

"I'm a bit embarrassed."

"It's nothing new for someone to keel over at St. Luke's, Father. You know that well enough."

"Yeah, I know. Octogenarians during a long gospel reading, choir sopranos who don't allow themselves breakfast."

"Altar boys who lock their knees during the Eucharistic prayer."

Peter flinched. "That was decades ago!"

"And," he fixed Peter with a look, "sometimes even young priests who've been handed a bombshell."

"Ambrose told you?"

"Your Irish friend? No, I only gathered. I've heard a few tales in that confessional that nearly knocked me over in my time. I'm here if you need to talk about it."

"I shouldn't discuss his confession."

"Nor should you think I've asked you to. You know better than that." Father Randall put his feet on the floor again and leant in over the desk. "But you can tell me why it meant so much to you."

"Father..."

"'Father!'" the older man parroted in falsetto. "I've met a few of our kind in my sixty-three years, you know. I've had curates who survived war zones, abuse as children, medical nightmares. Sooner or later they've all been triggered by a penitent. Not all of them keeled over, mind..."

Peter inhaled, imagining that what his throbbing head needed was oxygen. "Father, remember when you sent me to Ballykissangel?"

"Could hardly forget. On account of Jenny."

"On account of me," Peter corrected.

Father Randall eased back into his chair, inviting the younger man to spill it. "Something happened. You came back here. You were a bloody mess."

Peter shot a look at his superior. There was something mortifying about one Englishman pointing out that another wore his heart on his sleeve. Peter would have felt less exposed if the older man had taken naked pictures of him to put on the church website.

"I was in love."

Father Randall pokerfaced.

"And I fought it for three years, even took a retreat. She fought it as well. Even married someone else. Nothing could kill it." He stopped to collect himself, waiting for condemnation.

It didn't come. "In your own time," Father Randall whispered.

"Father, I was going to leave the vocation for her. Run away. Anything I had to do." Father Randall got up, and soon Peter noticed a bottle of mineral water had materialised before him. He nodded his thanks.

The parish priest took his seat again. "What happened, Peter?"

The familiar address caught him off guard. Gentle and paternalistic, it opened him like a key.

"She was electrocuted. They made me give her last rites. Her estranged husband came to town and picked a fight with me. We had a wake without her body - I guessed at the time he must've taken it - and then I just packed up and left."

Father Randall blinked. "This was right after your mother died?"

Peter nodded.

"And now you've learnt something new about this?"

Tears overtook Peter now. "Father, she faked her death, supposedly to save my vocation."

"Supposedly?"

"She hated the church!"

Father Randall didn't miss a beat. "But she loved you."

"Enough to abandon me! Enough to put me through Hell."

"Indeed. Sounds to me like you'd better go find her."

Peter nearly fell over again.

Father Randall pressed on, matter-of-fact. "In fact, I order you to do it."

"Have we both gone mad?"

"Father Clifford, we both know the only reason you still have this job is this woman's death, and we now both know it never actually occurred. Until you get some closure, find out what really happened, you're no good to me."

"And after that?"

Father Randall's eyes grew, but his voice shrank. "It'll depend on what you really want, I suppose."

"You're putting me on garden leave," Peter realised.

"For now," said the parish priest, "think of it as a sort of conditional retreat."

The curate felt his heart breaking. Then he felt sunlight on the inside of it for the first time in three years.

* * *

Ambrose had waited outside on the stone steps. Seeing his old friend emerge from the office wing of St. Luke's, he got to his feet. "Feeling better?"

"To be honest with you, I'm not entirely sure what I'm feeling."

Ambrose nodded. "You never did let me finish my confession."

"Sorry about that," Peter quipped, letting the nostalgia begin to intoxicate him. "Shall we pick up where you left off over a lager and some chips?"

"Your local?" Ambrose looked nervous.

"Problem?"

"A bit public."

"Ah." Peter thought for a moment.

* * *

And so it was to be a slightly different menu, in the sitting room of the Clifford house.

Peter gripped the handles of two brimming teacups in his left hand, the plate of Nice biscuits in his right. "Would you take yours, Ambrose?"

The Irishman snapped out of his funk. "Strange to be called by my real name," he said, relieving Peter of the plate, then a mug.

"What're you going by these days?"

"The neighbours in Cheltenham call me Bobby Aurelius. People down at the station, as well."

It took a minute for Peter to get the joke; it was good for a little smile. "The police station?"

"Oh, no, never again. I couldn't. I meant the television station."

Peter's eyes bulged. The biscuit en route to his mouth came to an abrupt stop.

Ambrose smiled a little now. "You've seen that programme where they hide the camera and do little pranks on streetcorners?"

"No..." He had, but it seemed unbecoming of a priest.

"Ah, well, I'm one of the ones doing naughty things in an animal costume."

Peter's eyes widened again. The hand holding the biscuit was beginning to flag.

Ambrose's grin melted into an indignant straight line. "Couldn't very well take a job where I might be recognised, could I? I'm dead. Just ask anyone."

Peter shook his head, and finally took a bite.


	5. Chapter 5

BELFAST

Assumpta paced the hard floors of her tiny, draughty flat, hoping to find a spot where Michael's voice might overpower the noise from surrounding units. At the head of the bed, it was violin practise; near the door of the kitchenette, it was a crying baby. In the bath, it was the hiss of a neighbouring shower, and the echo of her own uneasy voice against the old yellow tiles.

"So, lay it on me," she said. "What's happened?"

Michael's voice came through, weary, mellow, heartbreakingly familiar. "You'll recall that when we arranged your...departure, you had one condition on which I ought to contact you."

Her breath caught in her throat. "Fionn."

"He's okay. Padraig left town some time ago to dry out, and Kevin's since moved in with his mother in England. Fionnuala says a goat's welcome but a dog - for some reason - is a no-go. Kevin remembered my asking that he phone me if he ever had to give him up, and..."

"And now's the time," Assumpta finished. "Where is he?"

"Well, the good news is, he's on his way over from London. An old friend's taking a car ferry, and they're transporting another dog anyway, so she's agreed to pick him up from the kennel."

Assumpta wasn't fooled. "And the bad news?"

Michael used his best poor-prognosis voice. "The friend would be Niamh."

"Oh, God," breathed Assumpta. "What'd you tell her?"

"That I'd explain when I saw her."

Assumpta whimpered, wishing her flask was at hand.

"If it helps, that's not the_ worst_ news."

"Doc, I'm not sure I have it in me-"

"You need to know this."

"Fine." She sat on the lid, braced her elbow on the wall, rested her head in her hand...

"It's Ambrose."

"Ambrose! What about him?"

"He...followed in your footsteps, a year or so later."

"What?!"

"Long story. And then a few months back, Quigley did it - without my help, I might add..."

"Doc..."

"Anyway, to bring us present, Ambrose's guilt seems to have got the best of him. He wrote a letter; I spoke to him on the phone and he's adamant." A pause on the line, then: "He's vowed to tell Father Clifford."

She tried to speak. She failed.

"Assumpta, I'll book a room here. How soon can you get into town?"

"Soon," she choked. "I need to figure things out..."

His voice got an edge of chill. "Tonight. Figure that out. We have to come clean."

* * *

BALLYKISSANGEL

Michael lowered the handset into its cradle, his guilt increasing. Why hadn't he had the stones to tell her just what her leaving had done to everybody?

Turning behind him, he saw the eerie stares of the untamed Dooley children in the doorway.

"I thought Assumpta was dead," Dermot sneered.

"Maybe it's a different Assumpta," Grainne countered.

"I don't like that name. Why would one family choose it, let alone two?"

Their mother appeared behind them now, flustered. "Sorry, doctor," she muttered. She looked at her children. "Haven't I told you to respect people's privacy!" The brother and sister scurried away. Oonagh looked at Michael again. "What's all this about the dead publican?"

Michael swallowed the impulse to point out her hypocrisy, and hoped his reflexive grimace came off like a weak smile. "Nothing, Oonagh. But my good friend Maire will be in tonight on a family matter; could I reserve a room for her?"

"Bit of a short notice," Oonagh chuckled.

Michael didn't chuckle back. "You'll manage, I'm sure."

* * *

LONDON

Niamh wrangled the spry old setter into the back of the wagon, praying the younger dog wouldn't drive him mad through the gate. _Why would finding a new owner in London be so bad?_ she wondered. _Why drag the poor old boy all the way back?_

"Are we getting another pet?" Kieran asked.

"No, Kieran. We're just giving Fionn a lift to his new home."

"Where's that?"

"Same place we're going. Ballykissangel."

"Oh."

"Same place you were born."

"I don't remember."

She locked the tailgate. "Not a moment of it, really?"

"I remember Granddaddy a little."

"You remember your daddy?"

"Sean isn't my daddy."

"That isn't who I meant." _God, what I'd give for a conversation with an adult!_

"Then no. I don't remember."

It stung more than she had expected. A forgotten corner of her heart began to ache.

"Kieran?"

"Mmmhmm?"

"The dogs are getting a bit rambunctious at the sight of each other. Why don't you sit up front with me this next part of the trip?"

"Can't."

"Oh? And why not?"

"You said that was only for grownups."

"Special occasion, then. Come on."


	6. Chapter 6

MANCHESTER

The sun was fighting with the gathering clouds outside the old terraced house. The sun was losing. Peter rose to turn on a few lamps.

Ambrose was on his knees once more - this time, looking through old record cabinets that had sat mostly untouched since George Clifford's death, and entirely so since Mary Margaret's. He settled on The Hollies, an album Peter never knew they had. _Never too late for anyone to__ surprise us, _he thought.

Ambrose lowered the needle into the groove. "So you never kept up with anyone after you left Ballykea?"

Peter shook his head. "I couldn't bear to."

"Assumpta probably thinks you're still there."

"Doubt she thinks much of me at all."

Ambrose snorted.

Peter changed the subject, sort of: "So what changed your mind? Why go back now?"

Ambrose blinked into the new brightness of the room. "Guilt just got to be too much."

"Oh."

"I tried all along to do what I thought was right. But I'm living a lie. I miss my son. I miss my mother."

"And Niamh?"

Ambrose set down his teacup. "How I feel about Niamh stopped mattering a long time ago."

"I have a hard time believing that."

Ambrose gave a cold shrug. "Lots changed after you and Assumpta left."

"I'm sorry." It hardly made sense. Peter cast his eyes out the window. The clouds were thickening, the sun sinking lower.

Ambrose considered a biscuit. "You've not yet asked about Assumpta."

Peter looked at him. "What's to know?" he bluffed.

"Why she did it. Where she is. When we'll go and meet her."

"Ambrose," Peter warned, looking out again.

"You have to do it. You're under orders."

Now Peter spun to face him full-on. "How'd you know that?"

Ambrose looked sheepish. "Your parish priest had a window open."

Peter pointed two incredulous green eyes at the low plaster ceiling.

"Just admit that you want to know."

"I don't."

"You do."

"I don't."

"You do! You wish you didn't but you do!"

"Ambrose, you've had a long day. A two and a half hour drive, a problematic confession..." He turned for the staircase.

"Father, you've had a long three years."

Peter turned back, gripping the handrail.

"She's in Belfast. She's a regular supporting actress at some awful little playhouse."

Peter lowered himself onto the third stair from the bottom.

"I met an actor on the set who had worked there." Ambrose got up, came over to the stairs. "Showed me this. I made him copy it for me." Ambrose reached into his jacket pocket.

The photograph had been enlarged and printed on ordinary paper. The ink had warped it a little, in places, and it had been folded and unfolded, once lengthwise, once along the width. The lighting was awful, the group pose was awkward, and the actors' smiles were all insincerely toothy.

All but one.

Peter had been prepared for a lookalike, or worse, for the feeling he couldn't be sure. It had happened a half dozen times in the last few years - a dark auburn head in a full congregation, a blue-green Renault Extra on a busy street, a phantom scent of lily of the valley. When those things happened, he was right back on the bridge in his mind, ready to fling his collar into the River Aingeal once and for all.

Then he'd be back to reality, half determined to fling himself into the Mersey.

This, for its dreadful quality, was unmistakable. The woman he'd thought was bones or ashes, here facing diagonally but dark eyes pointing straight on, and that close-lipped smile that had every secret in the world behind it.

Now he noticed she was dressed as a harem girl. He blushed and looked away.

Ambrose folded the picture and set it on the table. He pulled his mobile from his pocket. "Doc Ryan could tell you everything."

Peter laced his fingers through the ribs of the banister. "All right then," he said softly. "I'm listening."

* * *

BELFAST

Travelling made Assumpta nervous. It was jarring to hear the car hire attendants call her "Miss Fitzgerald," always the feeling of wandering through a minefield.

For her own sake, Doc Ryan had pronounced her, but never officially declared her dead, never filled out a real certificate. Her old ident was still valid, for now, and theatre patrons almost never recognised her out in public; the few who did still never knew her "name," only what play she had been in, or what costume she'd worn. Still, it was nerve-wracking, this clash of her two selves.

Once inside the little grey coupe, she felt safer, more anonymous, invisible. She estimated she'd be back in Ballykea before last orders; the trick would be passing through town unnoticed (the main reason she'd opted against taking the Enterprise and Bus Eireann). She hoped the prop glasses she'd rented from the theatre, and the effects of her flat-iron, would help to throw people off the scent. It was too late now to dye her hair.

_Forget coming clean_, she thought. _I'm getting my dog and turning back. That'll be the end of it. No one'll be the wiser._

She couldn't quite believe herself. She turned on the radio to drown out the voice in her brain, but the DJ seemed to have a wry sense of humour. The song was an old one; sounded like The Cars. Something about a "double life."

She shut the radio off again.

What if Ambrose had already made good on his threat? What then? Peter could absolve his parishioners anything, could hear any confession under the sun, but could he ever forgive this? Maybe he'd be grateful. Yes, happy she had spared his career, thankful he hadn't thrown it all away for a woman with a lousy track record and a bad temper. He'd pat her shoulder distantly, thank her for leading him not into temptation, keeping him on course and in the frock. What he'd felt for her, he'd be over.

This thought failed to comfort her.

She thought now of the flask in her purse, which she'd left unreachable in the tiny backseat as a precaution. That comfort would have to wait.

"Oh, I can't believe I'm doing this," she said aloud, breathing deep.

She flicked the radio back on. The refrain from "Get Back" taunted her this time, but she let it play.


	7. Chapter 7

HOLYHEAD

Niamh left the ensuite door ajar as Kieran washed, pleased at his make-believe monologue. Letting him bathe himself unsupervised had been a necessary, terrifying transition - one of many, lately - but his burbling soliloquy was a comforting reassurance. Travelling with two medium-weight dogs had forced a bit of slumming it for accommodations, but as far as the boy was concerned, novelty was as good as luxury. An Egan through and through.

A memory crept in as she lounged on the lumpy, cheaply-appointed bed, in the forgiving dim light of their twin room. Ambrose, all those years ago, singing into the showerhead as they playfully debated potential baby names. He was as lost to her now as that pregnancy; she supposed she would go to her own grave believing both their deaths to be her own fault. No amount of reason could break through it.

She often wondered these days if she was ever really meant to be a wife. Motherhood, she had almost bungled entirely, but eventually she'd redeemed herself - though her promise to Imelda, to give Kieran siblings, was well enough forfeit now. Marriage, meanwhile...she had failed at it twice, now. _Rich of me to say Sean's was the "unreasonable behaviour!"_ And she couldn't even remarry in the church this time. Only the prenuptial to be grateful for. Daddy had insisted.

All the rest... A waste.

A wash.

She perked up her ears to make sure her son's head was still above the water. Singing, now, about the hotel soap. Plodding, repetitive, surely driving the next room mad.

How like the father he couldn't remember. Whom he should still have.

_No. I'm only missing him to make myself feel better about leaving Sean_. It wasn't working. She heard the plughole sucking water away now. She swung her legs off the bed and rose to help Kieran dry off, wondering when he would become too shy for motherly assistance altogether.

No father. No grandfather. No stepfather. And now not even a priest.

Kieran stood in the doorway, white towel round his entire midsection like a strapless minidress.

"Did you get all the shampoo out?"

He nodded solemnly.

Reaching into the smallest suitcase, Niamh retrieved his maroon-striped pyjamas, and dutifully turned away as he put them on.

"Do I have to go to sleep right away?"

"Yes, we have to be ready very early in the morning to get on our ferry."

"I thought you said it was a boat."

"It _is_ a boat."

"Oh."

There was a lull for a moment, punctuated by a few determined breaths. She tried to remember that feeling: fingers too stubby, sleeves too long.

"Okay. I'm all dressed for bed now."

She turned to face him. He was off by one button all the way down his front. "Good job," she yawned.

"Mummy? Can the dogs sleep in my bed with me?"

She looked to the mock-sheepskin cushion in the corner, where the two loyal beasts were snoring together. "Kieran, they're already asleep."

"Can I wake them?"

"You will anyway if you don't quiet down. Let them be." She smiled, turning down the linens for him. "C'mon now. I'll tuck you in."

* * *

BALLYKISSANGEL

No sooner was Michael home than the flickering light of his answerphone caught his eye. At this point, someone wanting a dose of medicinal THC would be a welcome change of pace. He'd heard from Kevin, and then Niamh, and then Assumpta; wasn't three blasts-from-the-past quite enough?

It wasn't. The recorded message was Ambrose, giving the number for a landline to reach him.

In Manchester.

Michael dialled it and waited.

The voice on the other end was long-lost, but no surprise. "Hello?"

"Father Clifford?"

"Still Father for now, anyway."

Michael smiled sadly, wondering inwardly if the English priest could ever absolve him of _this_.

* * *

Assumpta had overestimated her efficiency somewhat, arriving at the pub just as they were about to call last orders. Steeling herself with another nip from the flask, she pushed her ill-suited prop eyeglasses up on her nose, ran a hand through her carefully-straightened hair, then opened the once-familiar accommodation door.

The scent of the place was mostly as she remembered, but not enough; it was less smoky, and the new owners were using different cleaning products. The sheets wouldn't be as soft; the flatware would have spots; the wood would wear more quickly.

The decor_ had_ changed, but too little. _Mark your bloody territory, _she wanted to cry out. _Paint. Get a new "Cead Mile Failte" sign. Change the wattage in the light bulbs. Anything._

She glanced into the pub and then quickly away, too tempted to seek familiar faces.

She was unprepared for the one that came up to admit her.

_Sean Dooley?! Over my dead body!  
_

_Oh, fair enough then._

_Please don't recognise me. Please don't..._

She wanted to hide. Scream. Cry for the home of her first twenty-five years, for what she'd surrendered too easily. Laugh hysterically that Quigley's old rival had managed what Brian never could. Run for cover at the curate's house and tell Peter everything, beg his forgiveness...

None of that seemed particularly sensible.

So she settled for staring at her feet to obscure her face. It made the damned specs slide down her nose and onto the floor. She left them where they fell.

"Can I help you?" Dooley asked, stepping behind the desk.

She tried to disguise her voice as well, tried to give it a County Antrim flavour. "My friend booked a room for me. Maire Mellon."

"Right. I'm Paul Dooley. M'wife Oonagh and I run the place."

_Paul? What, Sean had a twin? Or just a new alias?_

She nodded, signing the ledger with her carefully-practised alter ego's autograph. (Not that theatregoers up north ever asked for it.) Out of habit, she reached for her credit card; then, realising where she was - and whose name was still on that card - she put it back and pulled a few notes from her wallet.

Dooley pulled a brass keyring off its hook. "Upstairs, third on the left."

As she stifled a laugh, she thought she might actually make it upstairs, escaping the notice of any of the old regulars.

It wasn't to be. When she looked up, she caught the eye of none other than Brendan Kearney, lingering in the doorway.

"Did Doc Ryan slip me something?" he joked, too soberly.

Dooley _(whatever his real first name was!)_ turned quizzically toward the schoolteacher. Assumpta grabbed her duffle and bolted upstairs.

Dooley called after her: "And toilets are at the end of the hall!"

Brendan could be heard to reply, "I wouldn't worry, 'Paul.' She knows her way."

* * *

_It's taking some time to line up the reunions just right, but rest assured they're forthcoming. Writing just-after-series-6 means a little extra research, since I normally constrain myself to the first three._

_I really appreciate anyone who's still with me, and all of you who are working on your own right now as well. I know I update quickly but I progress slowly, so thanks for your patience!  
_


	8. Chapter 8

LIVERPOOL

The wee-hours drive from Manchester had been a quiet one; the priest and the gard-turned-TV prank mascot were losing steam, still coming to terms with the absurd weight of the journey ahead. Phoning the doc, they had expected at most an address in Belfast. In fact, he'd surprised them with the news that Assumpta was staying at Fitzgerald's, and that Niamh and Kieran would get in from London the next afternoon.

Peter had been impressed by his old friend's initiative, phoning in a last-minute reservation for a car plus two. Now here they were, boarding their vessel to race the sun...and sure to lose. Badly. They made their way to their recliners, with a view in the opposite direction from the coming dawn.

"Wish we could've made the night crossing," Ambrose muttered, the first words either had spoken aloud in an hour.

Peter yawned. "I'm surprised we made this one."

"Should've got us a cabin."

"Ambrose, would you stop it? You've paid through the nose as it is."

"Well, I could never have faced it alone."

It was a subdued thanks - masculine, no fanfare - but Peter recognised it from arm's length. "I'm glad to be here." He realised he meant it. "At least let me pay for petrol once we're back on land."

"You can't afford it. You're a priest."

"With no house payment. You're an actor."

Ambrose let himself smile at this, and was quiet for a moment.

He picked up as if Peter had been along on the intervening reverie. "Do you think he'll remember me?"

"Kieran? How could he not?" Peter returned, almost automatically.

Ambrose shook his head. "Barely remember my own father."

Peter felt his heart lurch. "You believe he's still alive?"

Ambrose pointed his pale eyes at the black horizon. "I believe he might be. I figure if I come clean, Michael might as well."

Peter thought of a million questions. None seemed appropriate. So he simply sat beside his friend, looking out on the water, waiting for a bit of illumination to break across it.

* * *

BALLYKISSANGEL

Siobhan took the kettle off the heat with one hand, and set Aisling's sippy cup in place with the other. The whistling died down just as Brendan let himself in.

"You'll be cooking your own egg if you want one," the vet advised, pouring water over her tea bag.

"I've already eaten. Been up for hours." Brendan tousled their daughter's wild honey curls.

Siobhan's eyes were a bleary blue-green, like a sky threatening a hailstorm. "Something I ought to know?" She sipped her tea.

Brendan turned to the sink to wash his hands. "Oh, nothing much. Saw Assumpta Fitzgerald last night."

Hot breakfast tea rained across the table. Aisling, currently obsessed with the magic of spitting, gave a delighted laugh.

Brendan looked glib. "Would you believe, not so much as a hello? The nerve of that woman!"

"Brendan," Siobhan warned.

"Can't help but wonder who was in the know all these years."

"You never considered the possibility?"

"What was I to think? I saw her! I gave mouth-to-mouth!"

"You felt no breath?"

"I felt my own breath coming back, I thought! Michael said he couldn't revive her!"

Siobhan sighed, dabbing at their daughter's messy chin. "Brendan, you watch too much television."

It was a brutal accusation. Brendan went white, then red. "How dare you!" he hissed.

Siobhan was unruffled. "You really think CPR takes thirty seconds! You think she'd have woken right up!"

Brendan clamped his mouth and widened his eyes, confronted with the horrifying possibility of knowledge he didn't have.

Siobhan went on. "Brendan, if you start it, you keep it up till the cardiac unit arrives. Then you hand the patient over for a few jolts. If you're very lucky, there's a small chance the patient will survive. You don't give a few cursory pumps and puffs and expect a miracle."

Brendan shook his head. "I saw her. She was motionless."

"In the dark of the cellar. She was also lying flat, in an awfully dignified pose for the currents to have thrown her into. Did her hair look like someone's who'd been struck by lightning?"

"You knew all along?"

"I'd an inkling, Brendan. I thought we'd all gotten over it, kicked the habit. But..." she sighed, "Michael bent his elbows. That's how they fake it on _Baywatch_, so they won't crack a rib."

Brendan made a face. "I wouldn't know. I've never heard of _Baywatch_."

"Of course not."

"You wouldn't tell me she faked her death-?!"

"Ah!" This rode on a pointed scowl and a nod in their daughter's direction. "Not in front of her."

"What are we, to keep it a secret?"

"To stop handing it down!"

"Oh, same as we all agreed thirty years ago?"

"Till Ossian Egan got sick of the family life."

Brendan pouted at the mention of the name. "At least he could stick to his other commitment."

Their voices had grown quieter, but harsher. Aisling was engrossed, which served to deepen Siobhan's frown.

But it also softened her tone. "It was inevitable, I suppose. Someone was bound to blow the lid off it."

"You'd think it would've been Ambrose, right after."

"Wouldn't be surprised if he's right behind her."

Brendan pounded a fist on the table. "You don't mean to tell me_ Ambrose_ did a runner?!"

Siobhan shrugged. "Apple never falls far from the tree."

"Apple fell pretty damned far from the cliff!" Brendan appeared to disgust even himself with this.

Still, Siobhan half-buried her response in the teacup: "None of us witnessed him landing."

"Siobhan!"

Undaunted by the temperamental display, Aisling reached up expectantly toward her father. He lifted her from her chair, hoisting her on his side, calming somewhat at the sight of her. "You reckon we have any reunions on our hands?" he asked her mother.

Siobhan shrugged. "We'll have a lot to answer for if we do. In the meantime, there's no need to get a new generation in on it." She met his eyes and detected the pain in them. "Brendan, I'm sure Assumpta had her reasons."

"Siobhan, I helped raise her. When her parents let her down, I was there. I just thought..." He looked at Aisling; she pointed at her sippy cup, and he delivered it to her. "I only hoped I'd done a better job than that."

Tenderness crept in, uninvited. "You always do a fine job. Doesn't he, Aisling?"

Aisling spit a mouthful of juice in her father's face, and laughed again.

Outside, the clouds were gathering.

* * *

Assumpta awoke disoriented, taking a moment to remember she was not in her bed at home. What day was it? Did she have a hair and makeup call?

The bells of St. Joseph's were what finally reminded her. She flicked on the bedside lamp and looked around her.

She tried to imagine what must be taking place up the hill. Peter had prayed as he put on his vestments, and now he would be processing as Kathleen tortured the organ.

_I miss you,_ Assumpta thought, in spite of herself._ I miss all of it._

Did he still think of her? She supposed he must, sometimes. But he'd have healed by now; grown stronger. He'd have a little reminder here and there, maybe; babies, wine, Chinese food. But he'd have moved on, and the town with him. Ballykea needed him more than it needed her.

Was her name still above the pub door, hovering over him like a ghost? Maybe the place was "Dooley's" now, or "The Shell of its Former Self." She'd not even thought to look.

She made her way to the shower at the end of the hall, convincing herself once again that staying out of sight was the right thing. It was too late with Brendan, but then maybe he'd be bright enough not to tell anyone else.

_Only Peter's best friend. Right. Probably telling him at St. Joseph's right now._

She shook her head. Lathering up a leg for a decidedly precarious shave, she felt a heaviness in her gut. She would have to meet Michael today. He would tell her again it was time to come clean.

If all went as planned, he'd be the only other familiar face she saw.


	9. Chapter 9

_Your reviews have inspired lots of this so far! You're all amazing! _

* * *

DUBLIN

Niamh had congratulated herself on the idea of a restorative stop at Phoenix Park. The dogs badly needed a break, and Kieran himself was a bit stir-crazy. She had looked forward to showing him the obelisk, the gardens...maybe spotting a fallow deer. Most of all she'd wanted to show him the papal cross, to tell him how her own parents had brought her here when she was not quite his age, to see the pope. Well, really just to see a white-clad speck, from that distance. But the young Niamh had known it was important. She wanted Kieran to know it was important, too.

_What would John Paul II think of what I've done?_

_What would my mother think?_

The weather, for its part, showed no concern for their pilgrimage. Niamh eventually gave up trying to protect her makeup from the rain. Her dampening hair was now long enough to pull into a low ponytail, but only just: she knew it wouldn't hold. The downpour also made her acutely aware that she needed a stop of her own.

She looked at Kieran and nodded toward the toilets. "What about you? Don't you need to go before we hit the road?"

He shook his head. "I did it on the ferry."

"Wasn't that a long time ago?"

He shook his head again.

"You'll wish you'd gone in another half-hour. You'll be miserable and we'll have to stop again."

"I promise I won't."

"Well, will you come in with me and wait in another stall?"

Kieran made a face. "I'm not a girl."

"You're a boy with his mother!"

"I don't like it."

"I'm not leaving you out here alone."

"I'm not alone. I'll have the dogs."

Niamh scowled. She ushered Kieran and the now-soggy dogs back into the car.

"Now, the dogs will probably frighten off any bad people, but if someone approaches you-"

"Honk the horn."

"And?"

"Scream bloody murder."

"Correct. But watch your language in the meantime. I'll be right out."

She locked the car and sprinted for the outbuilding, feeling horribly irresponsible.

_So this is single parenthood,_ she thought._ Lord help me, I should have remembered._

* * *

Peter instantly regretted volunteering to take over driving duty. Ambrose was already fast asleep in the passenger seat; his quiet snore made Peter jealous.

Peter rolled his window down for a bit of fresh air, hoping it might revive him. He still didn't much care for driving. It had only been a painful reminder for all these years, and another needless risk to take with the sacred gift of life. Now something new was displacing that old heavy grief, something less simple. The knowledge that she was willing to let him believe she was gone, knowing he loved her.

The knowledge that he'd simply said, _I can't live without you ... Just don't run away from me,_ and she had taken it in the spirit of a dare.

He let out a bitter laugh._ Tell Assumpta Fitzgerald what not to do, see how far you get._

His eyes welled. He blinked to keep his vision clear. Mass would be underway at St. Luke's now. He ought to be there. Father Randall had been so eager to send him away.

_Save my vocation. Right._ He didn't buy it, not with her disdain for clergy. He had to know the truth, learn who she really was. Clearly in all that time he'd never really known her._ Once an actress..._

The sea air swam into his lungs, made him feel...not resuscitated. No. Revived? Restored, perhaps.

_She's still breathing. She's still out there._

_No. No. I'm not going back for her; I am going back to heal. _ He could hardly wait. No one had ever wounded him so brutally. He'd see her once again, cure himself of this pitiful sickness and be back to his duties in England in no time. That would show Father Randall. It would show _everyone_.

_Assumpta Fitzgerald's remarkable heart is still beating. I could touch her tonight. She would be warm._

A tiny glow manifested in his cheeks, on his neck, at the tips of his ears. He shook his head, willing it away.

He considered the snoring man at his left. He judged it a safe bet that some soft music wouldn't wake Ambrose, but might help a driver stay awake. There was a tape in the stereo of Ambrose's weatherbeaten old Astra; Peter turned the volume up slowly, at the expense of the first few words.

_**...I bet you think that's pretty clever, don't you boy?**_

Sometimes as a teenager he'd been known to do this - flick on the radio and take whatever came up as his advice. He'd never been able to decide if this was seeking God's guidance or something manmade, secular oracle in its place. But it had rarely failed him; like flipping to a random Bible verse, there always seemed to be something relevant to his situation.

"A reading from the Book of Whinging East Midlanders..." he whispered.

_**Drying up in conversation, you will be the one who cannot talk;**_  
_**All your insides fall to pieces, you just sit there wishing you could still make love...**_

This earned another bitter chuckle. _That was years ago_, he thought, remembering to press on through the amber light instead of slowing down for it.

He'd done so little of this since he moved back to Manchester. It occurred to him he'd never even traded in for a local driving licence. His old one still had him living on Quigley's property. It still had him collarless, and grinning like a fool: he'd stepped into that photo booth already hatching a plan to convince the examiner Assumpta was his "wife." One couldn't tell from the final picture, but he'd been blushing as well. He remembered the burn in his cheeks.

He wondered if any part of him was still that young man. For so long, all of him had felt like the one he became two years later, taking blows to the face by the side of the road.

**_The best thing that you ever had, the best thing that you've had has gone away..._**

There'd been a time when that lyric made him cry. This time, he shut off the song before it ended.


	10. Chapter 10

BALLYKISSANGEL

Liam moved toward the passenger side of what had once been his own truck, but Donal was already out of the driver's seat, gesturing over his shoulder with a trembling thumb.

"Are you asking me to drive, are you?"

Donal's buck teeth were chattering; his lips tried to cover them, succeeding only in looking like a pair of wrestling earthworms. He nodded without meeting Liam's eyes.

Liam took the wheel. "What's the matter with you?"

Donal shook his head. A few minutes' Kenny Rogers music followed, not quite in time with the windscreen wipers.

Finally the smaller man spoke:

"Liam?"

"Ah?"

"D'you believe in ghosts?"

* * *

The rain pummeled the stables with little mercy. Avril bit her lips into a white line as Siobhan checked over The Cat. She'd been hesitant to have anyone over since taking on her new ... tenant. Vincent - _Father Sheahan_ - would soon be back from St. Joseph's, and there'd be no warning him about the company that didn't yet know he lived here.

_We have nothing to hide,_ she reminded herself. _Nothing._

"Thanks for coming up on a Sunday," she said, thinking The Cat's lameness was nothing to her own.

"Believe me, I was glad for an excuse to get out," Siobhan said. "Man lurking about the house, and all."

Avril's heart thumped. "Um?"

"Brendan. One of his sulky moods."

"Ah." _Nothing to hide!_

Her mind wandered back to the previous evening, when she had walked in on his shower. He'd been too gracious about it. Also too naked.

"When did you first feel it?"

Avril's pulse shot up again. "Pardon?"

Only now did she notice Siobhan was gently palpating the horse's leg. "The swelling. When did you first notice?"

Avril swallowed. The horse. She's on about the horse. "Um. Yesterday evening. Cleaning her hooves."

_Cleaning. Washing. Lathering..._

"Was it hot last night?"

"Sorry?"

Siobhan gave a look of waning patience. "The skin. Was it warm to the touch like this?"

"Ah. It might've been; I can't recall."

"Well, I'll monitor for a few days, but my hunch is a bit of tendonitis. Superficial or deep digital flexor, if I had to make a wager. I can arrange to get an ultrasound up here, but it'll take some doing. Most likely it's minor, and treatment won't be too complicated... Is she due to race again soon?"

Avril couldn't remember. She shook her head.

She realised Siobhan was waiting for her to say something. _Come in for a cuppa, and see Vincent's things everywhere! _ No, that wouldn't do. "Dr. Mehigan, are you well?"

The bemusement in the older woman's eyes grew stronger. "Well enough."

Avril checked her watch. Mass wasn't _almost over_. Mass was _long finished_.

And she now heard an Australian-tinged baritone from within the house, calling out, "Hello? I'm home!"

Stepping out the back door, Vincent appeared to realise why he'd seen the Range Rover parked in front. He gave the sort of smile that stops midway up the face, like a child caught pilfering a sweet.

Avril cleared her throat and looked at her boots.

Siobhan chuckled. "Might've known it."

"Siobhan, I..." Avril looked up. No point hiding now. "Come in for a cuppa?"

The vet gave a smirk. "Ah, well. May it be any comfort to know: I've already heard the news of the day. You two roommates aren't it. Sure you're behaving yourselves."

Both of them blushed now.

* * *

Oonagh folded her arms on the breakfast table and stared. Her husband, nose-deep in his morning paper, gave a twitch of recognition.

"You're keeping something from me."

The balding head twitched side to side, a wavering sun on a newsprint horizon.

"It's this Mellon woman."

He didn't look up. "I don't know what you're on about."

"You've been cowering in corners since she arrived. She wouldn't even answer her door for me."

He peered around the edge of the broadsheet. "Why were you knocking at all?"

"Se-" she cleared her throat, "Paul."

"Do we offer room service now?"

"I'd have come up with something."

Finally he folded the headlines in on themselves. He said nothing, only met her eyes and then unmet them.

"You know something I don't know, love. Out with it."

He shook his head and took a bite of cereal, casting his gaze at the weather forecast.

* * *

JUST OUTSIDE OF BRAY

The upholstery in the cargo bed of the estate car would smell of wet dog for weeks, but at least the two dogs had developed a simpatico. The rain had slowed to a sporadic, large confetti: seconds passed between one drop and another, but the drops themselves were teaspoonfuls at least. The windscreen was getting wet at a pace too slow for the slowest wiper speed, forcing Niamh to trigger a spurt of washer fluid every few minutes, or else endure an intermittent rubbery squeak.

A slurping noise from the backseat added further percussion.

"Kieran, have you finished that entire water bottle already?"

"I kind of finished it at the park. When I was waiting for you."

Her eyes went wide.

"Mum?"

"What did I say earlier, Kieran?"

"I know, but I really need to wee."

_My kingdom for a jar,_ she thought, scanning the highway for their next opportunity.

* * *

_Slowing down now, admittedly; school and work and church and improv and family all want a piece of me, and then FF.N was down... I'm also trying to get all these late-to-the-party characters right, and the last season gave us so many mixed signals. Lots of ideas though, I swear. Please chime in, let me know how I'm doing._

_I know I'm dragging out the prelude to the reunions, but they start in the next chapter, my hand to God!_


	11. Chapter 11

BALLYKISSANGEL

It had gone eleven, and Assumpta was getting desperate. Clean and dressed, now, hair straight, and makeup on, her body expected caffeine, maybe even some food. She'd had no meal the night before. Now she was trying to think of a way to break her fast without being caught.

She'd been to her window and back a dozen times. Someone, looked like Donal, had almost spotted her, looking up as he passed by below. She told herself she'd gotten away in time.

Did Kathleen still run the shop these days? Maybe if she'd taken on help, Assumpta would have a chance. She looked out again, this time at the steps of Hendley's.

_Closed. Sunday. Right._

It appeared her options were downstairs or Cilldargan. McLogan's, maybe. She scowled. She disliked the notion of driving without a bit of caffeine in her system, just to support the business of a sleazy old man in a turtleneck. She decided she would make up her mind on the way down the stairs, maybe sneak a glance around the pub. If service was quick, she could beat the midday rush.

The pub was empty enough. Only an old mountainy type and a younger man with sandy hair and a cupid's bow were at a corner table, discussing a mechanical issue of some description. They ignored her. Assumpta had a seat at the bar, and soon the presumable Mrs. Dooley appeared behind it. Assumpta couldn't recall having met her in the old days, and she hoped that meant the woman wouldn't recognise her.

"Full breakfast?"

"That'd be grand."

Oonagh looked pleased. "To drink?"

"Coffee, please."

Oonagh poured a cup, too full to lighten, and set it before the guest. Assumpta indulged in a graceless but life-sustaining slurp.

"You know, I never dreamt of running a public house," Oonagh said idly.

Assumpta made a bit more room in the coffee cup. "You don't say."

"When we started, I was half afraid I'd have to become an undertaker as well."

"Lucky then," Assumpta muttered. _Please go away_, she thought.

Oonagh didn't. "Michael says you've family in town?"

Assumpta clutched the mug handle a bit tighter. "In a manner of speaking."

"Ever meet any of the old Fitzgerald lot?"

Assumpta shook her head, blinking. _Would you ever cook my meal?!_ Evidently not. She glanced up at the television. Some awful hidden-camera show; some pervert dressed as a rabbit.

Oonagh stayed put. "Understand they're all dead now. Place was a mess when we moved in. Neglected the electrics to the point that-"

Assumpta snapped. "Y'mind?!"

Oonagh's mouth and brow sank; her eyes went wide. She turned for the kitchen at last, leaving Assumpta feeling oddly guilty. She tried to forget it, tried to concentrate on the prank on the screen.

* * *

Liam savoured the familiar feel of the gearshift in his left hand, of the steering wheel under his right. He'd have preferred something a bit more contemporary on the stereo, but he supposed his companion needed what comfort he could find this morning.

Even now Donal shivered in the passenger seat.

"Would you ever stop it?" Liam offered. "There's no such t'ing as ghosts."

"I know what I saw. She's haunting the pub."

"She's been dead for t'ree years, y'eedjit," Liam reassured him.

They pulled to a stop on the Cilldargan road, and Liam bent down to salvage a potato crisp he'd dropped on the floor mat. Donal took a sharp inhale through his ridiculous nose. Startled, Liam hit his head on the wheel on the way back up.

"What is it?"

Donal pointed to a Vauxhall Astra headed in the direction of Ballykea. "Gard Egan. Gard Egan was riding in that car."

Liam rolled his eyes and rubbed the bump that was already forming on his crown. "Oh, Jayz. Did Doc Ryan give you the last of his bifters?"

* * *

Garda Frankie Sullivan snuffed her fag out on the casing of the rearview mirror. Pulling her hand away, she saw an unfamiliar car approaching in the reflection. He was travelling at the speed limit, or just under it, but something about him raised her hackles. There was an odd wobble to his steering, the sort she associated with drivers who weren't presently stoned, but who knew they'd test positive for marijuana if they were caught. It was the steer of someone paranoid, someone trying so hard to drive a straight line that he couldn't even steady his hands. GB number plates, she noticed. Medicinal user, maybe.

Unlike some potheads, this one pulled over without a fight. He obediently lowered his window and handed over the wallet-worn pink document.

"How are you today?" Frankie asked, hoping as always that her suspicions would be proven wrong.

"Fine," said the man at the wheel. He had brown hair cut close, bloodshot green eyes, a Northern English accent. A curly-haired man in the passenger seat was waking up.

"Have you taken any drink today?" the Garda continued.

The driver shook his head.

"No illegal substances?"

He shook his head again. A memory from University made his mouth tick up on one side; he depressed it immediately.

"And you are aware that marijuana is illegal in Ireland? Might be a little different than you're used to in..." Seeing the permanent address, she did a double take. "You live in the old curate's house?"

The driver smiled sheepishly. "That's a bit out of date."

"There's no law that you have to-" the passenger began, then interrupted himself. "Garda...Sullivan, neither of us is on any drugs. We've had a long journey, is all."

"Are you willing to prove it?" she challenged.

The passenger looked incensed. The driver shrugged: "Whatever we have to do."

"We'll submit to nothing of the kind, Father!" shrieked the skinny know-it-all.

This brought Frankie up short. "You were Aidan's predecessor?"

The driver checked with his companion, who nodded. The driver faced Frankie again. "Collar's in me luggage if you want to search it."

"Father!" the other man hissed.

"What're you afraid of?" Frankie asked.

"I know my rights! Section nine, Criminal Justice Public Order Act of '94!"

"Spoken like an expert."

"Ha! Wouldn't you like to know-"

The driver grunted an exasperated interruption. "Look, if you want to test me for something, go ahead. I'd just gone awhile without getting behind the wheel; now I've gone awhile without getting out from behind it."

Frankie bit her lip. "Your sidekick know how to drive?"

The sidekick's blue eyes might've shot flames. "Of course."

"Then let him take over. And get a kip when you get where you're bound."

The two men exchanged looks, then seats. As Skinny was about to pull away, Frankie put up her hand.

"May I see your licence?" she asked.

* * *

Ambrose watched the barred door slide closed in front of him. "You can't do this," he muttered.

Frankie matched his scowl with her own. "If you have a licence, why won't you show it?"

"Because I don't have to. I can show it to you within ten days. I know my rights."

"Self-styled legal expert, so! You'll know then that you shouldn't drive in the first place if you aren't carrying it."

"I wasn't driving until you told me to drive! And I am carrying it. I just don't care to show it to you."

"Something to hide?"

"No concern of yours."

"It's on you?"

"You're not going to strip search me?!"

"Only if you insist."

Ambrose balled his fists, and took a lungful of air to project into the next room. "Father!"

"Don't bother. I told your friend not to wait up. He's out for a walk."

Ambrose slumped into the wall of the holding cell. "Look, I know you're only doing your job."

"Oh, spare me. You have no idea what I have to put up with!"

Ambrose's laugh came out in a solitary incredulous blast, like an airhorn.

"Public Order Act, section twenty-four. Any person who fails to give his name and address..."

"If the gard is of the opinion that I've committed a crime. You're on shaky ground."

She circled behind her desk. "_You_ are! Now in case I hadn't made this clear, every additional word out of your mouth - feck," she interrupted herself. The key wasn't cooperating with the drawer.

"It helps to lift up on the handle a bit as you turn it," he said without thinking.

"Thanks," she uttered absently.

"But I don't need the leaflet."

She looked up. "Read enough of them in your past?"

Ambrose tightened his mouth.

She sunk into her chair. "Shall I call over my superintendent?"

Now his jaw dropped open.

* * *

Peter couldn't yet bring himself to go into Fitzgerald's, and the thought of St. Joseph's made him uneasy. Hendley's was closed; Padraig's old shop had a new name on it, some Dowling bloke. Ambrose's battle of egos with his successor would last a while, almost certainly.

It was time to visit another old friend. The Aingeal.

The recent rain had swelled the river nicely, darkening the sun-blanched topmost rocks with the promise of more water still. His smooth-soled shoes felt precarious on the slippery stones, but he tried not to slow down.

A familiar silhouette was just across, though perhaps a few pounds heavier and a few hairs greyer up top. He had a line out, for what good it would do him right after a cold downpour. Beside him was a smaller figure, made to waddle by a stiff life jacket and stiffer waders, and with a head like a marigold.

Peter couldn't help himself. "Shall there be a great multitude of fish?" he called out.

He saw Brendan reel in, lay aside his rod, and then kneel beside the child and point across. The little one waved.

Peter gestured to the bridge, an indication he'd take the long way round.

It suddenly seemed he had all the time in the world.

Then another downpour started.

* * *

The men at the corner table had finished up their pints and cleared out, and the full breakfast seemed to be taking forever. Assumpta had half a mind to abandon her post before someone else came along.

Too late. The accommodation door swung open, letting in a bit of silver light and a good deal of rain. Assumpta buried her face in her hands.

She heard the percussion of dogs: first shaking the rain off their backs, then their feet on the rug in the lounge, then their nails on the hard floor of the bar. Next were human footsteps, high heels and something noisier. Finally, a voice she'd know anywhere.

"Kieran, hold the leads for a moment."

Assumpta dropped a trembling hand at her side, and felt a wet nose bump into it. She couldn't resist any longer. Temptation screamed in her ear._ Turn around. Look._

Niamh was getting impatient. "Hello? Ma'am, have you seen the publican?"

Assumpta twisted on her stool and met the eyes of her old friend. "You might say that," she breathed.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Niamh whispered.

Fionn licked the hand of his once-and-again mistress. His auburn muzzle was dotted with white hairs now.

* * *

_Aren't I just awful? I promise reunions, and they're Peter and Brendan/Assumpta and Niamh/Assumpta and Fionn. But there's more on the way. The longer this gets, the longer I fear it might turn out to be..._

_Let me know you're out there. I noticed today that gmail is sending story alerts straight to my spam folder!_


	12. Chapter 12

Frankie looked at her detainee. Something about him put a chill in her blood. He wasn't creepy, exactly; might even come off boyishly good-looking, if he weren't so arrogant. No, the feeling was something more like déjà vu.

It hit her. She'd seen a photograph somewhere.

She cleared her throat. "You knew Aidan?"

He gave one nod exactly. _That face..._

"Smile," she commanded.

His eyes widened, indignant. "I will not!"

"Do it."

"No!"

"What if I agreed to let you go?"

He blinked. "You wouldn't."

"Have it your way." She let herself into the pen, locking it behind her. "Turn around."

Shaking his head, he complied, bracing his arms on the wall.

"Will I pat you down?" she whispered.

"Not if you don't buy me a meal first," he snapped.

"Which pocket then?"

"Back right," he conceded.

She fished out his wallet with the finesse of a pickpocket. "Have a seat."

"Prefer to stand."

She stepped out of the cell, turning the wallet over in her hands, but not yet opening it. "So you knew Father Aidan. Your friend Father Clifford was the priest before him."

"Your point?"

"You're a local boy." She opened it up now and retrieved the pink card inside. "Let's find out just how loc-"

She looked at the name, then the permanent address.

Her hands shook as she set the licence on the desk. She looked up to see her own predecessor, his head bent in shame.

* * *

Michael had been on this same doorstep just several weeks ago, delivering the welcome news of a benign biopsy. Siobhan had been terrified to see him, then grateful when he told her the results.

Today, she opened her door with a look neither frightened nor relieved. In fact she looked disappointed and pitying.

"You wanted to see me?" he offered weakly.

"Come in, will ya."

He didn't move. "Incision healing well?"

"Michael, for your own sake. Come inside."

He nodded, chastened.

Taking a seat on the sofa, he planned to decline the offer of a drink, but the suggestion of an anesthetic from one sort of doc to another seemed a loaded one. _This might hurt a bit._

He took a nip of whiskey. "Siobhan, I'm supposed to meet someone -"

"Sure she can wait. She's only just crawled out of the grave."

He looked away, shrinking back into the cushions. "You've seen her."

"Brendan has."

"I don't blame you for being angry with me."

"I'm angry with meself, Michael." She checked her watch, then raised her own snifter. "I'd a hunch all that time, and I said nothing."

"You didn't want to stoke false hopes."

"They were hardly false!" Another nip. "Father Clifford wept in my arms. If I could've comforted him, even a few days later..."

"He was already gone a few days later, Siobhan."

The vet's face was reddening. "When did she ask you? Why'd she have to do it?!"

Michael breathed in the vapour of the spirits. "You won't believe me."

"I hardly believed you that night."

"Siobhan..."

"Who else, Michael? Any other living we looked for among the dead?"

He sighed. "Siobhan -"

Her hands were already flailing. "Because I feel half like a sucker and half like a crook!"

Michael nodded. "So do I. Believe it or not."

Siobhan sat still and looked him in the eye.

* * *

In the reception lounge, Dermot and Grainne tried to keep Kieran amused with a sketchpad and some old colour pencils. His small, pudgy fingers struggled to control the yellow as he drew, tongue between his lips in deep concentration.

"Is that a piece of cheese?" Grainne asked.

"SpongeBob!" Kieran corrected her.

Dermot stroked a dog with each hand. "He doesn't have any clothes."

"I'll draw them next."

The phone rang, distracting Oonagh. Looking on from the bar, Assumpta started in on her third pint.

Niamh was still on the bottom half of her first. "So I have to ask," she said under her breath, "were you the one who gave my father the idea?"

A gust of laughter pushed stout into the back of Assumpta's nose. It burned. She swallowed. "I was told it was a proud Ballykea tradition." The sting began to lessen. "I thought for sure when you found out I was still alive..."

"That I'd kill you anyway?" Niamh finished.

Assumpta nodded.

Niamh shrugged. "Murder you later. For now I'm too tired. Maybe even glad to see you." She paused, checking that Oonagh was still on the horn. "She know who you are?"

"...I hope not."

"Then we should take this upstairs. Lots happened."

Ambrose. Assumpta realised Niamh might well still believe herself to be widowed.

"Grainne? Dermot?" Niamh reached into her purse and produced a few notes. "Watch Kieran and the dogs for an hour?"

The older children's eyes shone. _Dooleys to the last._

* * *

At Brendan's place, Peter did his best to keep Aisling in check as her father rounded up a few towels.

"Looks quite like her mother," Peter said, arranging the child on a chair. Accepting a towel, he gave his head a rub, trying to ignore the memory it inspired.

"Made a splash on arrival," Brendan smiled, draping one on his shoulders and another over his daughter's damp head. "Literally. Born in Quigley's hot tub."

Aisling giggled, looking like nothing so much as a confused nun.

Peter grinned. "Sorry I missed it."

"As were we all." Brendan looked at Peter, then back at the water. "Must be strange coming back. And what you're coming back to. Quite a shock."

Peter shuddered.

Brendan noticed. "Poor choice of words."

"Not as if it really happened," Peter muttered.

"Suppose you're right." Brendan scooped Aisling into his lap now, signalling a necessary change of subject. "So Frankie nabbed Ambrose, really?"

"She seems fit for the job. It was strange to see him get a taste of his own medicine."

"She used to be nicer."

"What changed?"

"Dunno. She's especially hard on the new priest."

Peter chuckled at this. "Fancies him?"

"I might've thought so, but it isn't like Assumpta was with you."

Peter shot a warning look.

"Ah, c'mon. No, with Frankie..." Brendan twisted his mouth, as if his tongue was searching around inside it for the right words. Or perhaps he'd eaten coconut earlier in the day. "It's almost as if she's punishing him for not being Aidan."

Peter considered this. He'd still no context for either of his successors, but he knew something of the character of the parish - its capricious loyalties, its fair-weather friends.

Brendan squeezed his brows together, pensive. "You know, Peter, I think Aidan left because so many of us punished him for not being you."

* * *

Ambrose had once or twice been handcuffed to another person. This was the first time he wasn't the one in a smart hat and uniform.

"This really isn't necessary," he told Frankie.

"Flight risk. Course it is."

"I'm no flight risk!"

Frankie snorted. They stopped outside the pub door.

"I'm back of my own free will! For the sake of my own conscience!"

"Then you'll gladly introduce yourself to the first person you see."

"Fine. If you'll unhand me."

"Inside."

Stepping into the pub, they turned to make the unlocking as inconspicuous as they could. Ambrose turned to hang up his jacket, another signal he wasn't going anywhere.

Turning to look, he noticed no one at the bar and no one behind it. From behind the kitchen door he could hear two youngish voices arguing, preteens or teenagers maybe, something about whose job it was to look after somebody.

In the lounge, though, there was someone. Sitting on the floor between two lazing dogs, working on a simple magna puzzle, was a small boy.

Before Frankie could say anything, Ambrose went to sit a few feet away.

"What'll that be?" he asked.

The boy shrugged.

"There ought to be a picture on the tin."

The boy grinned shyly. "There is no tin."

And there wasn't, Ambrose realised. The pieces were nesting in an old metal baking sheet; nearby was the zippered cloth bag they'd been stored in.

"Well then we're solving a mystery, aren't we?" Ambrose looked back at Frankie. She had taken a seat at the bar, and was pretending not to watch. He returned his focus to the puzzle.

Two small hands worked hastily to put magnetic squares in the tray; two large hands worked stealthily to put the squares into order. They worked like that in silence for several minutes; Ambrose no longer cared what Gard Sullivan was thinking.

He gave his young teammate the penultimate piece to set in place. "Do you like Wallace and Gromit?"

"Yes, very much." This with a serious nod, then a thoughtful pause. "Is this them?"

A door opened upstairs and some footsteps thundered on the stairs.

Niamh called down over the balustrade, panic rising in her voice: "Kieran!"

Ambrose looked up before he could think better of it.

More footsteps, now, and the voice of Assumpta Fitzgerald from the open guestroom: "Niamh, wait! One more thing I wanted to..." She descended halfway and saw it was too late. "...Tell you about," she added hopelessly.

Niamh staggered from the railing, backing into the corner of the landing and then sinking down against it, like a villain shot dead in a Western.

"Niamh," Assumpta breathed, kneeling beside her.

Niamh's tears were already swelling her face. "Does anyone around here ever stay dead anymore?!"

Kieran hardly noticed. He was laying the last puzzle piece where it belonged, in the space between his newfound heroes.


	13. Chapter 13

_OK, I've harped on this before in reviews for others. At the beginning of "Pack Up Your Troubles," Assumpta returns from Dublin and says she's "free and single" - sounds like she'd got an annulment, though it's tough to say if she was really there long enough to jump all the hoops. Then later, in "The Reckoning," she calls herself "a married woman," and we're left wondering. And then, in "Amongst Friends," Leo keeps calling her his wife, but he makes no claim on her estate.  
_

_So, since this is my first attempt to acknowledge the whole canon in a fic, I'm splitting the difference in the only way that makes sense to me. Read on._

* * *

Brendan had put Aisling down for a nap, and Peter had left feeling a little bit better. Getting no answer at the Garda house, he tried not to panic. He also tried to turn around without actually facing Fitzgerald's, pivoting his body just a bit faster than his head.

A voice startled him where he ought to have been looking. "She's a terrible one for the soup at the pub. Or you could try to summon her by stepping a foot out of line."

"Michael!" Peter brightened at first to see his old friend; then memory caught up with him, and he dropped his smile and his eyes.

The doctor steeled himself. "You don't owe me the time of day, Father, but I'm told they're all there right now."

Peter lingered on this thought for a moment; it was terribly seductive, the thought of stepping into the pub and seeing his old friends. He imagined the Chinese food still laid out, still piping hot... _But it wouldn't be, now, would it?_ "Not ready," he choked, finally.

Michael swallowed. "I am sorry. I expect no forgiveness."

Peter's eyes filled again. He shook his head. "You know me better than that, Michael. I need some time."

"Course."

Peter allowed himself a glance at the pub now. "And I'm not sure how much time I'll get. So we need to talk."

Doc Ryan nodded. "There were a million things I'd meant to tell you."

Peter was shaking, but he nodded toward Michael's car. "Don't suppose you're on the way to Cilldargan?"

* * *

CILLDARGAN

Lightning in the distance. The scent of mildew in the air filter. The reassuring hum of a well-kept engine.

Michael kept his eyes on the road. "I tried to talk her out of it."

Peter felt the pilot light in his heart go on, if only a flicker. "When did she ask?"

"On the phone, the night before the trial. Quite late, actually. I got the feeling something must have happened, but she wouldn't say."

Peter swallowed. He nodded.

"The next morning in the courthouse foyer, she told me to forget it. But then that evening she clearly changed her mind again."

"It doesn't make sense."

"Even after, I tried to ruin her cover. Telling you to get into the ambulance with her, hoping she'd hear you and come to her senses."

"I saw her in the morgue. She wasn't moving."

"Nor was she in a fridge. Her face was uncovered so she could breathe better. The tarp from the medics hid it well enough, but the hospital sheet would have given her away. She later admitted to taking a sedative when she went down to the cellar. I'd advised her against it, but I did warn her to lie down first and then swallow the pill if she had to do it."

"For her own safety," Peter understood. "So that's why she was pointing the wrong way."

"Peter, I am truly sorry."

"I feel like a fool."

"So does everyone involved. Sure that includes her."

They were in the carpark for St. Brigid's now. Michael turned off the ignition but neither man moved.

"She was adamant she had to do it," Michael said. "She wouldn't see reason."

Peter still couldn't look at his old friend. "Michael, I don't believe for a minute this was about my vocation."

"I never bought it either," the doctor conceded. "But she swore it was. I think she imagined a very different outcome. I know I did."

"Different how?"

"Oh," Michael sighed, "you'd stick around, and in a couple weeks she'd come to her senses. Something like that."

Father Mac emerged out a lacquered door now, moving with more difficulty than Peter remembered.

"If you want to scare the hell out of him, now would be your chance."

For the first time since his arrival, Peter gave Michael a grin.

* * *

BALLYKISSANGEL

Assumpta quietly led Fionn out of the reception lounge, leaving Niamh and Ambrose to their hushed conversation as a mercifully-knackered Kieran dozed on the couch.

"All right old boy," she murmured, stepping into the wet-earth fragrance of the street, clipping the lead to the collar. "Let's see how much you remember." She knew it was naive; just that morning she wouldn't have risked it.

Something had changed.

Perhaps it was the look on Niamh's face. There sat a woman who could forgive her father and her best friend for their unthinkable acts of abandonment. The news that her imperfect first husband had done the same, though, seemed to hit her like a kidney punch.

Assumpta had been unable to bring herself to ask after Peter. Niamh had carefully avoided the subject as well; Assumpta supposed it was to protect her from the knowledge that whatever he might have felt back then, he was over it now. Then again, maybe things with Ambrose and Sean had caused a falling-out on other fronts.

Assumpta looked at the dog at her side now, the truest ally possible, picking up where they left off as if hours had passed, not years. In a dog's mind, perhaps it was the same. Fionn was the best of everything she'd failed to be all these years: patient, honest, sure of being wanted wherever he went. Forgiving her abandonment and trusting her return. Fionn was innocence. Fionn was unconditional love. He made her want to repent.

Michael was right. Everyone had to know; in this town, they probably would by nightfall anyway. If Hendley's had been open, they'd all know _now._

The tug on the lead gave a sense of safety, of rightness as they went up the hill. The bad weather had kept the street mostly empty of foot traffic, at least since Mass got out. She felt the humidity plumping up her hair again, and she surrendered this battle as well.

She approached the red door of the curate's house, not noticing the sign plastered on the window until she reached for the knocker.

_Foreclosed. Quigley's. Of course._

"You won't likely find the curate there," said a dry, brittle voice.

Assumpta called back without turning around. "So I see."

"Indeed it seems Father Sheahan keeps as little time on the church grounds as possible," the older woman went on.

Assumpta whipped around at this. "Father _Sheahan?"_

At the sight of Kathleen Hendley, her heart sank even further.

The shopkeeper's eyes went stony; her teeth clenched and her lips pursed over them. "How like you. After all this time."

Assumpta found herself compelled to explain. Somehow. "Kathleen, I-"

Kathleen put up a forbidding hand. "I know."

This was not quite the dismissal the younger woman had expected. "You knew?" She let this sink in. "Of course. Who let it slip?"

In the weakening daylight, Assumpta saw something almost like pity in Kathleen's eyes.

It wasn't pity; it was the glow of a juicy story she'd been yearning to share for too long. "Sorcha Sherk, from my bridge club in Cilldargan. Her daughter is a solicitor in Dublin. Spoke of writing out a decree nisi with a young couple. The husband was a journalist. The wife was a publican in Ballykea, and did Sorcha happen to know her, and of course Sorcha would have no cause to..." Kathleen paused. Almost guilty.

Almost.

Assumpta tried to steady her breathing.

"After your...incident at the food fair," Kathleen added coldly, "Sorcha mentioned her daughter writing up a decree of nullity for the same pair. Only, the husband kept making these odd jokes. That the wife didn't exist anymore. That she'd martyred herself for a priest."

Assumpta couldn't answer.

"If you're here to fall at the feet of Father Clifford, I'm afraid you're about three years too late. He left town right away."

"Where'd he go?" Assumpta realised she was pleading.

"Heaven knows. I couldn't tell you if he's still in Ireland, if he's still a priest, or if he's still alive."

Assumpta took this in. It went off like a bomb in her heart.

* * *

_Grateful for your patience; should have another chapter up shortly. The big reunion is coming; I just want to get it right!  
_


	14. Chapter 14

Niamh still couldn't look at Ambrose, couldn't look away from the fireplace.

"You know what this means," she whispered, careful not to wake the boy drooling on the toss pillow across the room. "I was never widowed. I'm a bigamist."

"Well, then, you're not divorcing. It's always been void."

"Ever the comforter," she snorted, blowing her nose, then checking in alarm that her son - _their son - _had slept through the honk.

Ambrose caught himself adoring this. He hung his head. "I thought at the time it was the best I could do for you. For everyone."

"I mourned you, Ambrose. Took out benefits. Handed in your badge. Vacated your house. What did we even bury?"

He was sheepish. "My weight in water jugs."

It looked like she might laugh.

She didn't. She spilled more tears. "I'll never understand."

"I wanted you happy."

"You walked out on us."

"Were you not about to do the same?"

She looked up at this. "You didn't think to wonder why?" She turned back to the fire. "Ambrose, you didn't leave so _we_ could be happy. You were afraid of getting your heart broken, so you broke ours first."

Ambrose didn't challenge this. He pointed his own gaze at the flames.

"I have to figure out what to tell him," Niamh whispered. "'Oops, wee mistake. Your daddy's been alive all this time."

"Better now than in thirty years," Ambrose retorted, instantly wishing he could take it back.

Niamh looked mortally wounded. "Where on Earth do you get the nerve?!"

He realised she had finally turned to look at him.

He turned to face her. "I didn't mean your father, Niamh."

The dawn of it worked its way down her face. "Your father, too?"

Ambrose squeezed his eyes shut. "It's what I'm here to find out." He swallowed. "And not to become."

He waited, wilfully blind, taking in the heat of the fire and the sound of his son's tiny snore. He never imagined the one-time love of his life might reach for his hand, squeeze it in reassurance.

He opened his eyes.

She put up a sad smile. "We really were just a pair of stupid children, weren't we? When we got married, I mean?"

"I'd have grown up with you if you wanted me to," he said, turning back to the fire. "I'd have gotten smart if you'd asked."

"I thought I had." Niamh pulled her hand away. "Never mind all that now." She nodded toward the sleeping child. "He needs you in his life. We'll figure out how to explain it."

She stood and made her way to the bar. Ambrose checked behind him. Frankie had gone, an empty soup plate the only evidence she'd ever been there.

* * *

The rain was off duty, but thunderclaps persisted. Assumpta counted the seconds after each flash of lightning. The distance between sight and sound was too close for comfort.

She'd become somewhat superstitious about electricity over the years. Cry wolf once, she sometimes thought. She had nightmares. Someday it would get even with her, the divine bolt of retribution for all her sins, and no one would believe she was dead. They'd leave her to rot at the lakeshore, or on the mountainside, and when she got to her great reward it would be an endless trip down a ladder into a cellar where a wonderful man wept. She would never reach him.

Peter could be gone.

She heard Fionn whimper and realised their constitutional had gone too long for the middle-aged dog he now was.

And she hadn't thought to buy dog food.

* * *

CILLDARGAN

Father MacAnally stepped back in from the blue-grey dusk of the garden. Under the incandescent light of his parlour, he looked sallow, jaundiced even.

_Perhaps it's the sight of me,_ thought Peter. The edges of his lips crept up at this idea. It hurt.

"How are things in Manchester?" the old man asked.

Peter did not take the bait. He stuck to the weather. "Going on autumn, same as here. Conkers'll be making a mess of things in no time."

"And the people?"

"Well ahead of the chestnut trees."

Growing weary, the parish priest went in for the kill. "And your parish? Sure Father Randall was pleased to have you back where you belong."

Peter moved one eyebrow.

Father Mac ignored it. "Can I offer you anything?" He gestured toward the wet bar with his cane.

"Allow me," Peter said. He stood at the marble-topped sideboard, hesitated when his fingers grasped the faceted crystal bottle-stopper.

"That is, if you even drink anymore?" Father Mac asked idly.

Peter spun the globe prism out of its nest. "Allow meself a pint, time to time. Been ages since I set foot in an off-licence." He poured two measures of whiskey, one generous, one scant.

The older priest took the longer pour without hesitation. "So what brings you back here after all this time?"

Peter met the old man's eyes, took two deep breaths. "Luke 15:32."

It took a moment for the old man to search his memory. Peter savoured this.

Finally, Father Mac downed his whiskey. "When did you learn?"

"Ambrose popped into my confessional."

Father Mac went from yellow to white. "I see."

"Told me about himself. His father. And Assumpta."

White to pink, now. "He's an investigator by nature. I'm not surprised he found out."

"What I want to know is how long you've known."

The old parish priest shook his head. "Have you no shame, Father Clifford?"

Peter lowered his glass, untouched, but made no move to go.

"Father, what you must understand about this parish - why I wish desperately that we could get a_ local_ curate -" he clenched a fist on the arm of his chair. "We do things differently here. Sacred covenants...they're worth protecting."

Peter shook his head, keeping his eyes fixed on his old boss. "You can't... Don't..."

"I understand you feel deeply hurt by this, Father, but did it not work? Are you not still a priest?"

Peter took to his feet now, turning for the door.

"So indeed she knew you better than you knew yourself?" Father Mac called after him.

"I never knew either of you at all," Peter murmured, stepping out into the chill of the dark.

He reached behind him for the doorknob. The voice down the foyer startled him.

"You should forgive her, Father. It's the most honourable thing she ever did."

Now Peter slammed the door.

* * *

BALLYKISSANGEL

Since the vet's visit that morning, Vincent had felt naked all over again. Avril kept acting funny around him, averting her eyes when he set foot in the same room. As if he'd yet to put on any clothes. As if he'd done it all on purpose.

As if it was his fault refrigerators were designed to make a tall man stick out his bum as he looked for a Coke. That was all he wanted right now. No rum to go with it, no woman to titillate, no sweepstakes-winning piece under the bottle cap, just the caffeine and sugar to get him through. Just the two vices he was still allowed.

Maybe this roommates idea was a recipe for awkwardness. Living with someone was necessarily intimate, no matter how pure the intentions; you would eventually see one another at your worst. Just after a workout. Just out of bed.

Just out of the bath.

And then eventually, wasn't some parishioner or other bound to ask how to find him? "Oh, playing house with the beautiful local divorcee" would not cut it.

Avril pushed past him now with a hamper of clean laundry, and no hello. She had that storm on her brow and her lips, a plain warning to steer clear.

He never had been one to heed plain warnings. "Av-"

Her bedroom door slammed. Something blew out of the hamper and landed at his feet.

"Avril, you dropped some-" he looked down, "thing."

Something lacy, in ivory satin. He shook it off his boot.

"I'll be down at the pub," he called, eager to feel the cool evening air on his face.

The mobile phone in his front pocket buzzed. He shivered. "This is Father Sheahan?"

"Father," whispered a nervous voice. "I need your help."

Vincent stuck a finger in his free ear. "Who's this? Speak up?"

"It's Donal Docherty," the caller said.

"What's the matter, Donal?"

The whisper got smaller, more childlike:

"I see dead people."

* * *

CILLDARGAN

Assumpta emerged from the supermarket - _since when did Cilldargan have a Tesco?_ - and reached into her shopping bag for a tin of Cesar. Relieved to find Fionn still tied to the railing outside, she peeled away the lid, and the setter tucked in eagerly to the morsels and gravy.

Starvation averted, she loaded him into her rental car - no easy feat with his clumsy legs and a front seat that only leant part of the way forward. Coupes were not made for this. Low-end Belfast flats were not made for this. Maire Mellon, third-tier stage actress, was not made for this.

And yet Assumpta was. She was made for Fionn.

He poked his head between the two front seats, his nose wet, his breath redolent of the hasty supper he had taken. Assumpta chided herself for forgetting even kibble or biscuit treats on the way down; the ache of her guilt was getting heavier and colder, like clothes in a hard rain.

As if sensing her thoughts, the clouds began leaking again. She started the ignition, the lights, the wipers.

"How could I leave you, boy?" she whispered, scratching the base of a russet ear. "How could I do that?"

They set out again, back toward Ballykissangel. How could any of it have happened? How could Niamh have replaced Ambrose with someone even more obnoxious? How could late-breaking news from Kathleen have stung so much, when her unvarnished contempt had once meant so little?

Deep down Assumpta knew. Peter was gone. No knowing where. He could be in another part of the world. He could be married. He could be dead. He could be all the things she had been, trying to get over him, get him over her - only to break both their hearts. She would probably not see him again. It was only now she realised how much she had wanted that.

Coming to the old glade near the turnoff to Ballykea, she began to wonder what was overcoming her - shame, heartache, or the ghosts of those three pints? It would be dark soon. Maybe she ought to stop and think. There was no better spot for it.

Someone was there, caught in the rain. She thought how in Belfast, she would simply drive on; there was no picking up strange men on the roadside in the city, not if you valued your life. And perhaps now Ballykea wasn't so innocent anymore, either. Perhaps it never really had been.

The man was facing the statue.

He looked familiar from behind. _No. _It was impossible.

_Ah, but what would_ **you**_ have done?_

_Oh, let me do one good deed in my stupid life._

She pulled over.

* * *

_Luke 15:32: "But it was only right we should celebrate and rejoice, because your brother here was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found."_


	15. Chapter 15

Peter finally swallowed his pride and turned his collar. The wet cold had worked its magic, replacing the angry heat that had covered his neck at his brief sit-down with his former boss. It had only taken a mile and a half, on the dark gravelly shoulder of the Cilldargan road.

He turned away from the cross he had been revering and faced the dark motorway. The headlights that had swept the back of him a moment ago were now pointing into the rain a few paces ahead, illuminating the moribund drops that passed before them.

The driver lowered a window and whistled. Peter thought how he might respond to this in Manchester - how no sensible person would respond to such a thing, because no sensible person would initiate it. And really, were things any safer here in the country, or were people just more naive? The city-boy in him was given to believe the latter.

He felt rain leaching into his shoes. He supposed his clothes would only get colder and heavier as they grew soggier, and at least his probable murder would take place in a warm and dry automobile. And at least he didn't have to drive it himself.

The horn blared again, and he stepped cautiously down the muddy slope to meet the passenger-side door. Hearing the auto lock disengage, he let himself in. He meant to look at the driver, but a panting animal on the rear seat startled his attention away. The car smelt of wet dog, and rental detailing, and...lily of the valley.

"I'm afraid I haven't brought a towel," a soft, burnt-cinnamon voice apologised.

Peter felt his eyes sting. "What _would_ the late Douglas Adams say?" he managed. Badly.

Now she looked. "Peter?!"

He shook his head, in doubt, in disbelief, in recognition. He tried to speak _her_ name, but it came out a choked sob. A lightning bolt illuminated both their faces for a fraction of a second.

She opened her mouth to speak, but whatever she said next was lost in the thunderclap that immediately followed. He tried to imagine what it had been, tried to think of anything she _could_ say that would be the right thing.

And what could he answer? He wanted to demand an explanation, a confession, a repentance. He wanted to scream, to weep in her arms, to shake her by the shoulders in anger. He had imagined how their first conversation might go, had unfolded a thousand scenarios in his mind. How he'd unleash his wrath, his heartache, his astonishment.

Not one of his thousand scenarios included what happened next.

* * *

Niamh tucked Kieran into the daybed, pulling a quilt off her own bed to keep the chill off him. The dog curled up on a fleece throw at the foot. Oonagh had turned up her nose at the sight of two four-legged guests, but said nothing. Her husband had been less surprised by the arrival of two human ones who were meant to be dead.

No doubt the Dooleys were now waiting for the crowd to thin out downstairs, so Paul could explain himself.

Niamh stood and turned off the lights. "Aren't you coming to bed as well?" Kieran asked.

"It isn't my bedtime just yet," she said. "I'll just be downstairs if you need anything."

"Will we see the man again? The one from earlier?"

Niamh choked back an impulse, or perhaps a sob. "We'll talk about that in the morning, okay?"

"I like him. He's very nice, and he knows all about _Wallace and Vomit_."

She had to smile at this. "Some sleep now, you understand me?"

"I'm not sleepy."

"You kipped all afternoon. School will start soon, and you won't be able to do that anymore."

"Will I go to school here?"

"Yes. You'll enrol where my friend Brendan works. Where I used to work," she realised.

"Will you work there again?"

Niamh sighed. "Goodnight, Kieran."

* * *

Father Sheahan ran the pad of a finger along his glass of the sweet stuff, making a narrow window in the condensation. Donal was late to meet him. _Probably flaked out altogether. Probably meeting Bruce Willis in his dreams._

Paul Dooley cleared away the straw wrapper that had since become nine little wads of white paper. "You'll be pleased to hear your investment property is fully committed for the time being."

"That right?" Vincent murmured.

Paul nodded. "You'll be amused to know that half those bookings are dead people."

Vincent grimaced. "Finally embracing the old Irish tradition, are we?"

"Nah, Oonagh would never go in for the mortuary arts," Paul breezed. "Another tradition. More localised, I reckon."

Vincent looked up. Paul nodded over his shoulder into the reception lobby, where Oonagh had given Ambrose a cup of tea and a listening ear.

"Tell me, Father. How much did you hear about this town before you came along?"

* * *

It took Assumpta some time to understand what had happened. She had been momentarily blind, stuck behind the afterimage of a windscreen lit to a thousand watts. She had a ringing in her ears, as if someone had fired a cannon beside her head.

The car had lost power, was no longer idling on the shoulder, but simply_ inert_. As her senses of sight and hearing trickled back in, she noticed that every warning light on the dash had come on, and the horn was blaring of its own accord. Checking in the rearview she saw the radio antenna going from red-hot to black. Lopsidedness suggested that a couple tyres were blown. A moment later, the car regained its balance. _So all the tyres are blown!_

The horn went quiet. Fionn was whimpering. It occurred to Assumpta that the car's interior was hotter now. She turned to her left. Peter wasn't moving. Wasn't even blinking.

Her heart sank. Then she realised he was breathing, just stunned.

"Are you all right?!" she demanded. It felt like yelling, but it sounded very faint.

"Don't move," he probably yelled back.

She tried to vent a window to cool the interior, then remembered the electrical system was likely fried. He grabbed her hand away from the useless button, frustrated. "Don't touch anything!"

"Oh what're you, a safety expert?!"

"Sit still!" He squeezed the hand harder. _Too hard._

It was perfect.

She turned to look at Fionn. He was calming down; what dog liked thunder at all, let alone so up-close and personal?

"So we just wait?" she said, quietly - a test. Several tests._ Can he hear? Will he keep speaking to me? Will he stay?_

Peter nodded. "Till it passes, or someone comes by."

"Shall I check if my hazards still work?"

Peter was still clamping one hand; now he blocked the other on its way. "Let me." With a tentative jab, he hit the button. The flashing amber lights began to beam their gross understatement into the dark of the empty road.

For a moment now, they sat silent. Their breath fogged the windows, calling to mind a night long ago at Cill Na Sidh. The night everything began going wrong. He released her hands now. Occasionally, one of them would turn to look at the other, then look away. Every possible thing either one could say was too heavy or too light. The weather left no option to retreat, and the car left no option to move on.

* * *

_Farfetched? Ah, well. A similar vehicular lightning strike actually happened a few months back, in the opposite end of my home state. Everyone survived, and the story came in handy for research! (Husband wanted to know why I kept Googling "car hit by lightning." I admitted nothing.)_

_Sorry for the delay. I rewrote this chapter a bunch of times, and I also foolishly took on another commitment. (Only if you'll find it amusing: it's a female lead in a local play, and the character's name is Mary...)  
_


	16. Chapter 16

Oonagh reached behind the front desk for the brass key to a single room. "Here you are, Ambrose."

Ambrose thumbed the grooves of it, watched it catch the light. "Can I ask a terribly stupid question?"

Oonagh gave a wry grin. "Suppose there's no harm, now you're no longer the law."

Ambrose grimaced, dropping his arm on the chair beside him. "Why does everyone call your husband 'Paul' now?"

Oonagh's chuckle built steadily, almost to a whoop.

Ambrose frowned. "What?!"

She tried to sober up. "Sorry, only no one's ever asked before. Been something of an emperor's-new-clothes situation."

Ambrose grinned a little at the idea of his own bravery. "So?"

Oonagh leant in. "You're bound to secrecy."

"Course."

"When my husband completed his sentence, he wanted a clean slate. He thought of Saul, from the Bible. Repenting, recanting, changing his name. New starts. Redemption. And I suppose, if we all called him 'Paul,' he might be reminded to keep his course."

Ambrose furrowed his brow. "Why on Earth is that a secret?"

Oonagh checked again for witnesses. "Because to anyone who knows him, my husband's a staunch nonbeliever. Even I pretend not to notice when I catch him praying." A sad smile came over her now. "I suppose if it brings him comfort...well. You marry someone, you marry their secrets."

Ambrose looked away. "Yeah."

Niamh came down the stairs now, met his eyes for an instant, and then shuffled shyly into the bar.

"Must be odd for the pair of you," Oonagh ventured, rising to follow her.

Ambrose tilted his head. _Whatever._ Then he went upstairs to his own room, to sleep under the same roof as his son.

* * *

No evening traffic had passed the little grey coupe and, for want of a clock readout, it was hard to tell how long it had been. Occasionally Fionn would wheedle into the dampened storm noise, or another crack of thunder would break through. Words, however...

It was Peter's stomach that spoke first.

"Have you eaten?" asked Assumpta.

He retraced the day in his mind. "Breakfast. Don't suppose you have any provisions?"

"More to Fionn's taste than yours, I fear." She sucked her teeth. "Bit peckish myself. Where was breakfast?"

"Aboard the ferry from Liverpool."

Assumpta pulled her response as if out of a hat. "I had heard you weren't in town anymore."

"No," he returned, not sure how much more to share. He felt a chill come over him, felt it frost over his voice: "I had heard you weren't at all anymore."

She breathed his name. It formed a short-lived cloud in the cooling air.

"You know, in all my life," he began; hearing his own unsteadiness, he stopped, then restarted. "What on Earth made you think..." Now his blood was moving faster, hotter. He took a breath. Two. "Did it never occur to you..."

Four breaths. Six.

She looked resigned. "You have a right to ask why. Every right."

"No, I've a right to _know_ why. I don't believe you'll tell me the truth."

She had pointed her face toward the side window, staring at the rivulets coursing down it. She was taking short, sharp breaths. Crying? Acting? He wondered if he'd ever be able to tell. Wondering only made it more impossible. It made him want to cry, however genuine it was.

"Are you still a priest?" she asked, not turning back to him.

He felt a weight in his gut. "I am."

She nodded, the threat of tears still in her voice: "Where'd you go?"

"Manchester. Mum left me the house."

"Home."

"Could call it that." He couldn't get the bitterness out of his voice. Nothing was home. Not anymore. "You've gone back into dramatics."

"Yeah."

"Belfast?"

She shrugged. "Far enough away."

"That's Fionn back there?"

"Yeah. Just got him back."

"How does he fit in your new life?" It came out cruel. He knew it.

She put a hand over her eyes. "Forgive me, Father, I don't know! Okay?! I don't know anything that'll happen! I made a mistake! I let you down." She leant forward on the wheel. It worried him.

"You did worse than that, Assumpta."

"No, Peter, I mean I never thought you'd find out."

Even still he was bowled over by her audacity. "Oh, that would've been fine then!"

"It worked! Didn't it?!"

"I loved you. I told you."

"You were going to throw away everything to marry me. Did you not see how well that worked for the one before you?"

He felt the heat return to his skin. "I begged you not to run away, and what did you do?! That very night?! I mourned you! I wanted to die with you!"

"You wanted an easy choice, Peter! I gave it to you the only way I could."

"Oh, would you leave off the martyr business?! I should've known. You never said it back. You didn't love me. You only had to say, 'I don't love you.' Because that's the way a normal person breaks a heart."

"I did love you, you sanctimonious English coward! I knew if I told you, I'd ruin everything! I knew I couldn't pretend I didn't anymore. So yes, I ran away. Are you happy?"

A vehicle passed outside. Assumpta tried to flash the highbeams, but they wouldn't cooperate. She punched the horn, which made a pitiful bleet in response. Peter raised a hand, warning her to stop taking chances. The other car drove on.

Watching the taillights disappear in the rearview, Assumpta swore, then sunk back into her seat, tears flowing again. Peter put an arm around her shoulders; she squirmed from it but he didn't pull it away. They were both weeping. She put her elbows on her knees, her face in her palms.

The thunder was a few seconds after the lightning this time. Fionn began to grumble.

"I'm so sorry," Assumpta whispered.

He didn't know if she meant to himself or the dog. He felt himself weakening. "You always hated the clergy. Why my vocation?"

"You've already said you wouldn't believe me." She rubbed her eyes and sat back again. "And you don't owe it. I lied. I gave up the right to your trust."

"You really thought I could simply move on? Go back to business?" He tried to sound gentle; he was too fatigued for rage.

She was weary, too. "Didn't you? Ultimately?"

"Assumpta..."

"It was meant to be, Peter. Did you not give me last rites? I could hear you. The church first and always. It seemed I'd done the right thing. I thought you'd stay in town, but...well, the parish in Manchester always wanted you."

He thought now of what Father Randall might say. "They still don't want me."

"You were a good priest. Sure you still are." She paused, then turned to the backseat, retrieving her purse. From within it she produced a small flask. "Care for any?"

He frowned. "You always carry that with you?"

"Oh, please. I only thought I won't likely be driving us anywhere." She unscrewed the cap and offered it.

He sniffed. "Vodka?"

"Takes bad smells out of costumes between washings. And the sting out of a tough room."

"I'll pass," he said.

She considered it a moment, then replaced the cap. "Ah well." A sad chuckle escaped now. "You know another thing I do when I can't get into focus? Onstage?"

"What?"

"I imagine you, about eight rows back in the audience. Energy goes right where it ought to be." She shivered. "You don't have to buy that either, 'course."

He noticed the heat had indeed left the car. "Maybe I ought to try that with my next homily. Picture you, midway back in the pews."

"Peter..."

"Funny thing, when you were 'dead,' I always did. I always imagined you looking in, folding your arms, shaking your head." He counted another flash-boom interval outside, and felt his humiliation rising again. "None of it was true, then. Was it? You weren't dead, you weren't watching over me, and you'd've been delighted at the fruits of your labour."

Assumpta looked like she'd taken a sucker-punch. She reopened the flask now, and drank half its contents. She closed it once more, then dropped it grudgingly in the cupholder between them, down like a gauntlet.

Peter picked it up.

* * *

Niamh nursed her pint slow as she could, undeterred by the clanging of the bell. She looked down the bar at Father Sheahan, and a current of tacit understanding passed between them. The curate rose from his stool, toting a glass of ice-diluted cola with him. He took the seat beside the parishioner who was never his - with whom he had, in the space of one whispered confession, built the secret that kept this pub alive.

"Still no sign of your date?" she muttered.

"What, Donal? Nah, probably found someone prettier on the way here."

"Sure Dooley was all over bending your ear anyway."

The curate shrugged. "He let me in on the basics."

"My father, my best friend, and my husband. Common denominator: me."

"I know you're too smart to blame yourself, Niamh."

Niamh pointed a dull-eyed pout into her glass.

"You have to get some sleep. You're driving yourself mad."

"You sound like me, talking to Kieran."

"And if, during decent hours, you ever want to talk..."

She looked him in the eye now. "I might, at that." She blinked a few times, trying to remember something. "Did you ever find a place to live?"

A stone-faced Donal appeared in the doorway, much to Paul Dooley's chagrin - and Vincent's relief.

Niamh nodded blankly, and downed the last of her lager. "G'night, Father."


	17. Chapter 17

_Your reviews mean so much; the crop on the last few chapters especially warmed my heart. Thank you! Thanks also once more for your patience. And yes, there'll be a P&A emphasis on this chapter and the next, but others will still be getting their moments in the limelight. Lots left to sort out and lord knows how long that'll take; maybe I should have called this one "Series Seven - Ballykea Apocrypha."_

* * *

Peter capped the now-empty flask, the vodka burning its way through him. It had been a long time since he took so much drink on so empty a stomach. He felt the numbness seeping in, then the glow, then the looseness, and finally the nostalgia.

"You want to know something funny?"

Assumpta turned, looking horrified.

"Every year at St. Luke's, the choir sings a Requiem for All Souls' Day. We have the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed. The secretary collects names, hundreds of names every year for the necrology. We read them. I give names. My mother. My father. My grandparents. One unlucky mate from the seminary." He fixed her eyes as best the darkness allowed. "I've never given yours."

"Fair play to you. I wasn't entitled to it."

"No. Because I knew you wouldn't want it. I never did forgive myself for those last rites. They pressed me so much to do it. Niamh, Father Mac, everyone...d'you remember?"

She nodded, pushing down a guilty sob. "I was all full of downers. Felt like I was made of lead. Couldn't feel anything, inside or out, didn't think I could move. Never forgave myself either, quite." She swallowed. "But I thought...for you..."

"You thought losing you wouldn't be so bad?" He was shaking. Laughing. Crying. "This flask of yours...there was a time I'd have drained it twice every waking hour. I was no priest, I was a one-man Def Leppard." He was at it again, making rotten jokes to whitewash the ache.

She didn't laugh, but she didn't flinch. "You got better."

Peter tried to come up with a response to this, but another flash interrupted him. This time it wasn't the storm; it was a pair of approaching headlamps in the sideview mirror. A lorry, maybe - anyway, something much larger than the car before - passed by them.

For a moment Peter was ready to call it a wash.

Then it pulled over. The ignition shut off, and the driver hopped out. Peter gingerly tested his door mechanism with a fingertip, then opened it. Rain and cold blew in. "Stay here a minute," he told Assumpta.

Out of their foggy Faraday cage, he could make out the shape of a wrecker, and the form of a man approaching him. "Someone said they drove by, saw a disabled car," the man called out.

Peter nodded into the continuing drizzle. "We were hit by lightning!"

"Well, c'mon. Let's get you hitched up."

* * *

Donal seemed on a quest to consume his last-orders packet of crisps as noisily and inefficiently as possible, with a strange orchestral duet between his rustling of the bag and his loud chewing.

Vincent reminded himself to be patient.

"These...dead people you've seen about," Vincent began, gently, "are they people you knew when they were alive?"

Donal nodded, punctuating it with a crunch.

Paul looked knowingly down the bar at them. Vincent nodded back. "Donal, would you tell me who they were?"

Donal shuddered and shook his head, killing another crisp. "I can't do that!" a few crumbs tumbled out. "They'll hear it. Dead people always know when you're talking about them."

Vincent bent his forehead into his palm. Paul refilled his Coke.

* * *

It had been an awkward ride in the breakdown lorry, with just enough room for three people and a dog stretched over their laps. Assumpta's stomach was a work of macrame as she pondered the fate of her little rented coupe. She had no idea whether it was salvageable at any cost. She doubted if such damage was covered by the excess insurance she'd let the agent talk her into. She hadn't thought to skim the papers for "acts of God."

_If any,_ she thought, as the men jumped out their doors and the setter got up, freeing her from the cramped middle seat. She retrieved her earlier purchases from the car once they'd plunked it down in front of the former O'Kelly's Garage. Leaving her keys in the drop box, she made a mental note to ring one Edso Dowling first thing in the morning.

She tried to pay the tow man, but he waved her off. "Your husband already took care of it," he smiled, climbing back into his cab.

He drove away, revealing Peter on the other side.

She persuaded Fionn to heel as she made her way over. Silent again, they walked in the direction of the pub - not quite together, not quite apart.

* * *

Peter watched Assumpta bound up the pub stairs with Fionn in tow, then turned back to face the reception desk. He doubted if he would get anything to eat tonight, but he could be sure the pub would be locking up any minute. He had to check in before he did anything else. At least if he had to be sick, he could do it without an audience.

Being in the pub again was a surreal feeling. Here was where he stood the night Jenny Clark commandeered his house - the night he spent at the pub instead. There was the spot he'd stood gulping Heineken with Assumpta as Niamh and Ambrose danced in celebration of a pregnancy. There was the bar where he'd told her he loved her, and the path the stretcher had taken into the street not an hour later.

A dark-haired woman, perhaps about Brendan's age, appeared at the desk. "Glad you made it, Father."

Peter gave a weary smile and reached for his wallet. His stomach rumbled again, and an acidic taste rose up from it, a note of vodka on top.

Turning to look in on the bar, he almost swore he saw Donal Docherty, gawping and removing his knit cap. The man next to him - looked like a priest, actually - turned over his shoulder to see.

Peter chalked it up to his own intoxication and went up to his room.


	18. Chapter 18

_Some material in this chapter was originally meant to be a one-shot fic, set in Series 1. It just didn't seem enough to stand on its own, so I folded it in here._

* * *

Peter kicked off his shoes and stretched out on his bed - or at least, what would be his bed for the next few nights. The bed felt familiar, but the room didn't look like the one he'd had the night before the football match; he realised his memories of that room were hazy, and he was grateful._ One less thing to cling to._

He tried not to think of his hunger, which was now bad enough to be a headache. It rang out above his teeth, behind his eyes. He'd stopped at the top of the stairs to watch the last customers leaving the bar; then he'd seen a man who looked like Sean Dooley, locking up behind them. It was too strange to question, too humiliating to plead for leftovers...

He heard a soft knock at the door, then a jostle of the knob, then something bouncing against it.

By the time he opened the door, Assumpta was halfway back to her own room. In the better light of the corridor, he could appreciate the sight of her standing up, breathing...

Looking down, he saw a plastic bag dangling from the doorknob. _Not an abandoned baby, at least._

"'Sumpta, wait."

She turned. "Um. It's no big deal," she said, drawing closer to keep her voice low. For a split second the light caught in the tiny hairline scar that crossed her eyebrow. Another memory. _Broken glass. A stone. Blood._

He pulled the bag off the doorknob. It had some weight to it. _Glass._

She got that old uneasy look on her face, and started explaining things too quickly. "The durif is left over; Dooley was afraid wouldn't keep any longer. The bread was the same. I offered to pay but he insisted..." She was blushing. _Blood_. "I remembered you were hungry, so...half a loaf of bread, half a jug of wine, and..." Quick as she had reached his doorway, she began to retreat again.

"Join me," he heard himself say, powerless against the vodka in his system and the voice in his ears. _Stone._

"No, no. I ought to go see my dog, and you need to put on some dry clothes."

"Can't."

"What?"

"Well, my luggage is in the boot of Ambrose's car. He's probably out cold by now."

She turned over her shoulder.

"Fionn probably is as well," Peter went on. "C'mon. Have a bite to eat."

Assumpta shook her head, then paused, longing eyes on the bag.

Then she looked up. "Do you promise not to consecrate it first?"

* * *

Assumpta wondered if anyone had ever done a picnic on the floor of this particular room before. She wondered if the metal bed frame beside her was the one that had once been her own. She wondered if Fionn was worrying, back in her own temporary pub quarters; perhaps he thought she had abandoned him again.

Peter tore the bread with his hands and passed her the first piece. "This isn't the room I had last time," he guessed, looking around.

She couldn't stifle a grin. "What, before the football match? No, no...I guess it's no surprise, you wouldn't remember."

He frowned. "I don't."

"Well, you came down for a glass of water to take your paracetamol and codeine..."

It clicked. "My ribs were killing me."

"Yeah. As soon as you downed it, I remembered you'd been drinking wine with your friend not an hour before."

As if on cue, he pulled the cork from the half-empty wine bottle. Realising there were no glasses about, he took a swig straight from it, then passed it to her. _Drinking from the same bottle, twice in one night,_ she thought. _Too intimate._

She drank anyway. "So for a while we talked, and then you started to get...a bit pie-eyed. And then a bit wobbly. And then very, _very_ wobbly. And then I asked if you needed help back to your room, and you patted your pocket, and you said, 'I think I've locked meself out.'"

Peter looked as if it was beginning to come back to him. "Where did you end up putting me?"

She felt some blood rush to her cheeks. "My room."

His smirk was as skewed as ever. "You didn't!"

"I did. Remember when I woke you from downstairs, next morning?"

"Same door I'd knocked to wake you," he said, recollection dawning. "You did tell me to plead the fifth."

"Yeah, well."

"So where'd _you_ sleep?"

"You don't remember that either!" She took a bit more wine. "I'd brought you up a bag of frozen peas to keep on your bruised ribs, but you couldn't get them to stay in place, so...I kept them on you. At arm's length. Or as far away as the bed would let me get."

His face looked as hot as hers felt right now. "Thanks for that."

She couldn't resist. "Wish you could've heard some of the things you said in your sleep that night."

"I didn't!"

"Oh, yes."

He looked away, still aglow. For a moment they sat quiet, listening to the hum of electricity in the cosy room.

"What did you do when Jenny came back for her things?"

"Locksmith had been and gone by then. All's well..."

He signalled his desire for the bottle, and she passed it. "Not the only time we spent a rainy night, I suppose."

She remembered the baby, the night nodding off in shifts on the same sofa. She had let him take the first one, for an utterly selfish reason: so she could sleep in the warmth he left behind.

She took one more bite of bread. "Well, no worries this time. I ought to get back to Fionn." She rose.

He stood as well, less steadily.

She looked at him once more. "Peter...I am sorry. I thought I knew best. I've regretted it every day."

His eyes had gone glassy again, too like that night years ago. "I am...glad," he stammered. "I mean, you're alive and all."

"Get some sleep," she said, combating an urge to reach for him. He'd be sober in the morning, and he'd surely hate her again.

"And you," he yawned.

"Get out of those wet clothes," she stammered before she had time to think better of it. Now his grin was bright enough to make her feel sunburnt.

She shut his door behind her and went back to her own room, changed into her pyjamas. If she bent around Fionn, like mortar round a brick, there was almost room enough for her in the bed.


	19. Chapter 19

Monday morning, Oonagh caught her husband between the shower and the wardrobe.

"You really thought you could keep Assumpta Fitzgerald a secret from me?"

He tightened the towel around his waist. "I wanted to be sure."

"Oh, it's sure. Had a good long talk with the late, great Ambrose Egan last night."

Paul picked out some clothes and laid them on the bed. "Oh."

"I suppose she's back to reclaim the family pub," Oonagh went on, trying to sound indignant.

"I doubt that very much."

"Could be our chance to hand it off, you know. Be a normal family again." She chose a necktie and passed it to him.

Paul scowled at the tie and shook his head, but he accepted it.

* * *

Brendan took his breakfast at the pub - savouring the last week of his summer holiday, he supposed, but also eager to glimpse some of the hall-of-famers he'd yet to encounter. Siobhan had been away to her surgery early, and so Aisling was beside him. Oonagh had thoughtfully dug up an old booster seat, and slipped a bit of molasses into her oatmeal.

First down the stairs was Peter Clifford, looking sleep-tousled and still wearing yesterday's clothes. He waved lazily at them, jingling some car keys in his hand, and walked out.

Next after him was Niamh - what would her last name be now? She had Kieran beside her, their dog on a lead, and was speaking into her mobile phone. Crossing through the bar, she squeezed Brendan's shoulder affectionately in recognition, but then ushered the boy out the pub door. Looking out the window, Brendan saw them cross the street, tying the dog out in front of Hendley's.

Assumpta and _her_ dog were seconds behind; she gave a nod hello, looking terribly distracted, and went off in the direction of the garage.

Peter came back in now, shouldering a duffle that must have been in the car overnight. He lugged it back up the stairs, passing the keys to Ambrose on his way down.

Ambrose gave a guilty look at the floor when he noticed Brendan, looking for all the world like a schoolboy in for a scolding.

"Will you ever join us for breakfast?" Brendan said, mild as he could.

Ambrose looked back up.

* * *

Kathleen watched in silence as Niamh and Kieran meandered through the shop. The Egan boy had grown so much; he was beginning to look a bit like his father, but his eyes, blue for so long, had taken on the familiar Quigley darkness. Perhaps his hair was darkening as well.

His mother, in one of her smart suits from London, was ducking behind displays to finish her phone call. Kathleen might have been able to catch the edges of such hushed talk three years ago, but her hearing was beginning to dull now. Nothing could be more frustrating.

Finally, her basket full of sandwiches, bottled drinks, and a newspaper, Niamh made her way to the counter, still murmuring. "Look, I have to go; I know it's strange. Will you investigate what this means for the proceedings? Good. Thank you." She tucked the mobile into her purse. "How are you, Kathleen?" She retrieved her wallet now, and Kathleen noticed the ring was gone from her left hand.

* * *

Edso Dowling was no Padraig O'Kelly, that much was certain. Watching him pore over the hire car's charred remains, Assumpta couldn't help but imagine that if he'd arrived in town sooner, Niamh's matchmaking whims would have gone full tilt.

The mechanic looked over the open bonnet at her. "Might take more than a cursory once-over to determine if there's any hope," he said. "This was a rental?"

She grimaced and nodded. In the partial daylight streaming into the shop, she could better see the superficial damage. Paint was scorched in several places. A small hole was burnt into the roof, and a damp spot lay below it on the back floor upholstery. A wiper blade had melted in place on the windscreen.

Edso was looking over the battery. "When are they expecting it back?"

"Two more days."

He scoffed, but his eyes were kind.

"Yeah, didn't think so," Assumpta said.

"I'll give them a ring about it," he said. "Will you be needin' a loaner meanwhile?"

Assumpta thought of Fionn. "Just this morning."

* * *

Clean and, finally, dressed in some dry clothes, Peter met Oonagh at the front desk, and she handed him the cordless.

He nodded his thanks as she slipped away. "This is Father Clifford?"

Father Randall's voice came though the line. "Have you seen her yet?"

Peter felt his brow sink down in annoyance, his eyes rolling up to meet it. "Are you a parish priest or the village yenta?"

Father Randall laughed. "Things are going along fine here at Luke's, thanks."

The implication wasn't lost on Peter. "Do you really think I should be taking a week off?"

"I think you should be taking whatever time you need," Father Randall said coolly, "until you have the answers."

"I have the answers. There's nothing going on between us, Father."

Palming the phone's mouthpiece, Peter looked up at two sour-faced juveniles peering over the banister.

"Are you talking about the lady who went in your room last night?" asked the girl.

Father Randall laughed again. Peter hung up.

* * *

The dog tore after the tennis ball, and Kieran flopped onto the picnic blanket soon as his mother spread it out. "What did we come all the way up here for?"

Niamh pointed to the view from their overlook. "This used to be my father's favourite spot. And the weather was finally nice enough. And we have things we need to talk about."

Kieran picked at a tuft of grass.

"Don't we?" Niamh pressed.

He shrugged. "Things're weird." The tennis ball fell at his feet, and he cast it out again.

Niamh nodded, watching their pet bound down the hill. "I agree." _Just tell him._ "Kieran..."

He met her eyes.

"The man you met yesterday...did you like him?"

Kieran nodded.

"Well, what if I told you that was your daddy?"

Kieran tilted his head. "I thought my daddy died a long time ago."

"We all thought that. It turns out he hadn't died."

"How could you get that wrong?"

Niamh frowned. "Let me think how to explain it..."

The dog returned, dropping the ball this time for Niamh. Inspiration struck. She picked it up and threw it.

"All right. When I was young, I had a friend whose house caught fire. The family all got out safe, but no one could find the cat. They assumed the cat must have died in the fire, and they were very sad. Then one day, on her way home from school, my friend took her bicycle past the old burnt out house, and she heard a little mew. The cat was above her in a tree. It wasn't dead at all."

"So Daddy wasn't dead all this time, he was just...lost?"

The dog returned again, retiring the ball and curling up alongside Kieran on the blanket.

Niamh felt something catch in her throat. "Exactly."

* * *

Frankie reached the door of the pub and tucked the manila envelope under her arm. She straightened her uniform once more before going inside.

Oonagh looked up from the glass she was drying. "Get you anything, Garda?"

Frankie shook her head. Spotting Ambrose at a nearby table with the Kearneys, she made a beeline. He froze in place. So did everyone else.

* * *

_Dun dun DUN, as Margaux would say.  
_

_Also: I must admit, I can't remember if Niamh and Kieran ever named their puppy. Anyone recall? Failing that, I'll entertain any and all suggestions. _

_More to follow soon!_


	20. Chapter 20

Frankie moved into the spot Brendan and his daughter had vacated, hands stretched over her coffee as if she didn't trust it to stay put.

Ambrose's heart was racing; Frankie could almost see the pulse in his neck. He pushed his thumbnails together in a sort of civil war: "You're here to re-arrest me?"

She shook her head.

He did a double-take. "The superintendent-"

"The superintendent says hello."

"Oh, God."

She rolled her eyes. "He told me that pressing charges of any kind would be costly, time-consuming, and a terrible embarrassment to An Garda Siochana. He doesn't want another word on the matter."

Ambrose swallowed. "Sounds a bit like him."

Frankie opened the envelope, unfurling the stack of sundry papers within. "I was up all night. I was able to find some information on your father. I have records access you don't have - anymore. I want to help you find him."

At this, her predecessor's eyes brightened.

She went on, more quietly. "Based on what I've found, we might not have much time."

* * *

Assumpta steeled herself as she pulled open the door to the vet's. Fionn showed a familiar reluctance to go inside, but his will to fight the inevitable had diminished somewhat with age.

No one was at the front counter, but Siobhan's voice rang out from an office down the hall; it sounded like a telephone conversation, a cheerful one.

"Well, when I looked up the nearest expert in equine sonography, imagine my surprise!" Her deep laugh came down the corridor like a hundred rubber balls. "Ah, it'll be grand to catch up...Okay. Well, I just heard me door open, so...Right you are. See you then."

So she was in a good mood. That would help, Assumpta assured herself. It would have to.

Finally the veterinarian appeared in the lobby, stopping dead in her tracks at the sight of Assumpta. The smile drained quickly from her face; the blush took a bit longer.

"Aroon, aroon, won't you come back soon," muttered Siobhan.

Assumpta forced a smile. "Hi, Siobhan."

Siobhan blinked. "Dr. Mehigan, if you like."

The chill reached Assumpta. She sent it right back: "What had you so happy just now?"

Siobhan looked away. "Exam room two, be right along."

* * *

Avril awoke late. Realising Grainne would be along any minute, she tried to calculate just how much of her morning routine she had time for. Certainly shampooing was out.

Opening her bedroom door, she felt her foot catch on something soft. Looking down she saw a pair of hopelessly precious silky pants, the ones with the tawdry lace panels and the awful satin bow on the front. They'd been out all night for the curate to admire. Fantastic.

Kicking them into her room, she staggered to the bath, only to find the door shut. She heard the familiar sound of a shower going, and an Aussie belting out some unlucky song a Capella...

_"If He didn't want me lookin' all the pretty little women, He'd-a left my old eyeballs dead, isn't that so?"_

She went back to her room to pick clothes to change into, hoping to distract herself from the frustration until he wrapped it up. An outfit later, he was still at it.

_"Well He knew what He was doin' when He made that magic vine; His own son got a reputation for turning water into wine, isn't that so?"_

Patience wore out. She pounded the door.

* * *

Siobhan stepped back from the exam table, removing her gloves, and blew into a Galton's whistle. Assumpta heard only the breath, but Fionn perked right up.

"Well, he's in decent shape for his turn in the toaster oven," Siobhan remarked, caressing the setter's back. "Particularly given his age, I'd say his hearing's all right. Is he up on all his shots?"

Assumpta screwed up her face. "Suppose he had to be, to board the ferry with Niamh."

Something seemed to dawn on the vet just then. "You really came out of hiding just for his sake?"

Assumpta nodded.

A hint of empathy returned to Siobhan's teal eyes. "Better late than never, I suppose."

* * *

Doc Ryan's dispensary wasn't set to open for a half hour, but the knock sounded urgent. When he opened the door, Father MacAnally stood before him, face contorted in pain.

"What's the matter, Father?" Michael asked, half wishing it was the younger local priest to help him through his own hour of remorse.

"Inside," Frank returned, oblivious.

Michael understood immediately. It had finally gotten bad enough. It was time to try the last resort.

"Father, I'm officially not in that business anymore," Michael warned, closing the door behind them.

Frank's eyes were hard, icy. "And I'm officially not a customer, now or ever."

"Never a word," the doctor whispered.

"You're telling me," said the old priest.


End file.
